


love me not

by customrolex



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Chinese Translation Available, F/M, Graphic Description, Homophobic Language, M/M, Military Homophobia, Minor Eames/OFC, Pining Arthur, Straight Eames (Inception), Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:23:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1226101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/customrolex/pseuds/customrolex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur wasn't out at work. He didn't exactly hide anything either, but he also didn't volunteer the information that he was gay. Dreamshare wasn't a very liberal culture. A few people had been forced into retirement for entering into certain relationships or situations. One of the architects he preferred had been ostracised from the extraction field when her daughter came along only three months after her wedding. An extractor-point man duo had been found dead in their home; each shot in the head and removed from same-sex-domestic-bliss. It was an intimate field; sharing minds meant sharing phobias and the technology had been invented by old, prejudiced men during the cold war. Those hatreds were hard to dilute. He didn't think anyone would try to kill him (he had a pretty deadly reputation) but work would be hard to come by if someone found out. He wasn't ready to be cut out of the society he worked in. He loved his job.</p><p>Yet here was Eames, winking at Arthur ... Oh, boy, Arthur thought warmly, staring after Eames as he disappeared into the back to change, he was in trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love me not

**Author's Note:**

> Now available in Chinese as translated by the amazing @RebeccaTang: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1960914  
> Thank you Rebecca for putting a nearly six months of her time in on this project. As a writer, it's a damn honour to have someone take the time to translate my story. She's great and I am eternally honoured.

The first time Arthur saw Eames, he knew he was in trouble.

Eames was soaking wet, furious and absolutely made of muscle. His muddy blond hair was longer than Arthur would learn he liked to wear it, his suit coat was dripping and the white button-down underneath was nearly see through. His face was clean shaven and drawn into a glare. Arthur didn't see extremely, incredibly attractive men that often in dreamshare. 

Joffin, their extractor, was practically cowering under Eames's glare. Arthur realised the hulking mass of anger must be their new forger. Arthur had never worked with him before. Rumour had it that he was quite good. 

"Hungarian!" the big, muscled British man shouted in a dark, gorgeous timbre. "Not Ukrainian! Hungarian! I speak fucking Hungarian and you told me Lamarck did as well."

"I thought—"

"When sending someone to talk to the mob, thinking is not our game," he snapped. "We need to know things. I was nearly killed by fucking Ukrainian gangsters. I was nearly shot!"

Arthur let the door shut loudly behind him. A fuming Eames gave him barely a glance. Arthur supposed the PASIV device in one hand labelled him as safe, as a dreamer, and not a fucking Ukrainian gangster.

"Who are you?" Joffrin demanded. Arthur smiled coolly, crossing the small room to shake his hand.

"I'm the guy who does his job," Arthur said shortly. "You must be the other guy.”

“Excuse me?” Joffrin coughed in surprise. Eames continued to radiate fury and cold water.

“I sent you files detailing the need to find an infiltrator who spoke Ukrainian, or as a backup, Serbian. I take it you've blown the job before we've gotten started?" Arthur asked. Eames snorted, throwing an exasperated hand in the air.

"It's not blown—" Joffrin tried. 

Arthur cocked a questioning brow at the dripping man. Eames laughed without humour, pushing wet hair out of his face.

"I can still forge for you in the dream, but infiltrating their ranks is pretty much not an option now," he promised. Arthur nodded, running through contingency plans in his head. Bribery or kidnapping was always an option, and he was certain he could arrange for them to have access if a dental or medical emergency appeared in the next few weeks. One never knew, with the mob. Something could always be arranged.

"Still doable, then," he decided. He lowered his gaze to Joffrin. "We'll need a new location, if this operation was compromised. Can I trust you with that?" Joffrin nodded as sheepishly as an international mind criminal could, and scurried off into the little worktable he had set up prematurely for himself.

"Can't fucking believe it," Eames muttered, mostly to himself, plucking at his sopping jacket. "One day in and the job is blown."

"I hadn't even arrived yet and it was blown," Arthur agreed. He swept the man's form for any sign of concealed weaponry. He had a gun tucked, cliché, behind his back, but his suit had been well tailored to hide it. "I'm Arthur. I was meant to be point. I take you're meant to be forger."

"I only associate with people who know the difference between Hungary and the Ukraine," he warned lightly when Arthur stuck out a hand. "Eames," he added, nevertheless. "You're rather darling and posh, aren't you?"

"I beg your pardon?" Arthur said unthinkingly, a bit thrown. Eames grinned sharkily, releasing Arthur's hand after a too-long moment. He dragged his fingers along Arthur's palm, cool and damp and callused. Arthur refused to shiver. 

"You," Eames repeated, "This job will be fun if things keep going wrong, and you keep appearing in all your ruffled, sharp glory to defend my honour." His teeth were endearingly crooked and Arthur looked away from that plush mouth. Fuck, he was going to get himself punched if he didn't watch it.

"It was my pleasure," Arthur sputtered stupidly. He very purposely didn't lower his gaze to the near-see through shirt or the sopping, clinging trousers.

"Glorious," Eames all but purred. He patted Arthur's bicep and Arthur frowned at the slight damp spot on his grey woollen suit. "I'll just change into something that doesn't smell of dirty lake, and we'll get to work, shall we?" He stalked off, peeling himself out of the wet jacket. The wet-sheer material clung to his muscles, and exposed shadows of tattoos, and a single gouge of a scar along his shoulder blade. He wrung the jacket over Joffrin's head, and the man accepted the pouring of dirty water with a curse and a flail. Eames sent Arthur a leering grin at the extractor's reaction, and Arthur smiled back before he could help it. 

He was flirting, Arthur realised. In full view of their co-worker.

Arthur wasn't out at work. He didn't exactly hide anything either, but he also didn't volunteer the information that he was gay. Dreamshare wasn't a very liberal culture. A few people had been forced into retirement for entering into certain relationships or situations. One of the architects he preferred had been ostracised from the extraction field when her daughter came along only three months after her wedding. An extractor-point man duo had been found dead in their home; each shot in the head and removed from same-sex-domestic-bliss. It was an intimate field; sharing minds meant sharing phobias and the technology had been invented by old, prejudiced men during the cold war. Those hatreds were hard to dilute. He didn't think anyone would try to kill him (he had a pretty deadly reputation) but work would be hard to come by if someone found out. He wasn't ready to be cut out of the society he worked in. He loved his job.

Yet here was Eames, winking at Arthur over a dripping man's head. Oh, boy, Arthur thought warmly, staring after Eames as he disappeared into the back to change, he was in trouble.

//

"You, in a simple grey coat, in a simple white room. Now you know, you know it now.  
And so. Now you know, you know it now."

//

Eames only found out Arthur was gay by accident.

He'd assumed, just based on general percentages and the ratio of straight-gay people he knew, and the secondary ratio of people in dreamshare that Arthur swung as straight as he did. He never took Arthur's almost-cold disinterest in their chemist's flirting to mean he disinterested in women. Kate was very beautiful, but the kind of beautiful Eames could imagine wasn't someone's type. She looked like something pulled out of a sixteenth century French portrait, all porcelain skin and wispy colouring and delicate lips. Had she not found him brutish and prickly, he would have absolutely loved to have had her. As it was, his absent attraction was waylaid by her repeated attempts to force Arthur to give her even that.

One night, nearing the end of their third job together in a year, Arthur interrupted his evening passport making. Kate had left hours ago.

"Um," he elegantly began. Eames cocked an arid brow, looking up from the file he'd been reading whilst waiting for various inks to dry.

"Can I help you?" Eames asked, softening the sharp question with a slight, amused smile. Arthur never took his words as insults or snideness, like Kate did. Arthur gave as good as he got, sharply and with great derision and sarcasm, most of the time, or blushed inexplicably and looked away. Eames teased and pulled proverbial pigtails more often on blush-and-retreat days, just because he could and Arthur would let him.

"I was wondering if you wanted to get food," Arthur blurted, tucking his hands into expensive, Scottish wool, coffee-brown trousers. "While you waited for inks and watermarks. I—Would you like to. To have dinner with me?"

"That would be lovely, darling," Eames admitted, closing his file. He tossed it on a table behind him (far from the mess of his work desk) and stood. Arthur beamed as Eames yanked his jacket off the back of a chair. He seemed to take joy in the little things, Arthur did. Eames couldn't say he minded.

"You'll have to choose a place," Eames pointed out as they left out the back of the old, burnt-out, Brazilian barbecue restaurant they'd commandeered for the job. The whole place reeked of ash and spices, and the wet of winter air crept in the boarded front windows. "I don't speak Flemish."

"It's a fairly useless language," Arthur admitted, holding the door for Eames. He slid his key into the deadbolt to lock up behind them, saying, "I can only ever use it in the north of Belgium. Dutch is a bit too different to use it there."

"How many languages do you speak?" Eames wondered. Arthur shrugged, taking the outside of the sidewalk as they walked towards the downtown area.

"I'm familiar with quite a few," he hedged. "Functional in them, like I'm functional but far from fluent in Flemish. I'd say I'm truly fluent in four, maybe five."

"Your first language was what, dearest?" Eames pressed. Arthur smiled shyly. Eames smiled back. It was a bit cheeky; Arthur would admit to speaking English and Eames would tease that most Americans only spoke that, and only kind of at best. He hadn't really expected answers to questions like these when he first met Arthur; he was a notoriously private man. Eames's cursory background check didn't turn up much other than an overdue cell phone bill in Lisbon and a couple of APBs in various states. Eames took it that Arthur wanted to be more than careful colleagues, as much as he did. Eames found the point man unbearably interesting. His military precision overlaid with an almost boyish sense of humour and a sharp love of condescension made him just the type of person Eames could get along with. 

"Polish," Arthur replied bizarrely and honestly. "And French," he added with a secondary shrug. "I grew up in Quebec so I learned them mostly at the same time."

"You sound flawlessly American," Eames nearly gasped. He contained himself with pure skill. "I would have sworn on my mother's grave you were." Arthur smirked proudly at him.

He also, at the end of an easy meal of mussels and chips, which was apparently a Belgian specialty, insisted on paying.

"Arthur," Eames complained when Arthur pulled out colourful euros. Arthur waved him away.

"I invited you; I should pay. You'll get it next time?" Arthur asked, looking hopeful. Eames chuckled and wondered why that was.

"I'd be delighted, darling," he promised. He didn't understand the reason for Arthur's quiet, happy smile until the third time they went out after work.

It was another dinner and drinks affair, though they had gone to lunch once, Arthur walked him, rather kindly, Eames had thought, back to his hotel. It was quite late out, dark and cool. The sky was as clear as a city sky ever was, and Arthur walked very close in the chill, their shoulders brushing.

"This was fun," Arthur remarked. He gave Eames that strange, warm look he often did. Eames quirked a grin in return. Arthur watched his smile.

"It was," Eames agreed. There was a beat of comfortable silence in which Eames was about to say goodnight and in which Arthur leaned in.

Arthur kissed him gently.

Eames jerked back, surprised. He imagined—Arthur was gay!—that he looked horrified.

Arthur started, taking a step back, almost stumbling. Eames realised how close they had been standing. Even though Arthur's step put them at a reasonable distance, he hurriedly stepped back as well.

"I'm not gay," Eames interrupted, hating that his tone sounded unkind. Arthur looked as though he'd been slapped.

"Right, um, of course not," Arthur sputtered. He looked away shakily, red in the face. "I—of course not. I didn't—I'm not." A horrifying realisation dawned on Eames.

"Oh, god, when you said we should get food you meant—"

"I didn't—" Arthur lied quietly. He scratched the back of his neck, staring at a nearby parked car intently. "Just food." He was gay! It had been a date! Dates! Eames had to remind himself to calm down; one kiss—fuck, they'd kissed!—was not a reason for a big gay panic. He genuinely wasn't homophobic, but he was genuinely a having-a-gay-man-date-and-kiss-me-phobic. He was anti-personally-actually-being-in-a-same-sex-relationship, as he felt most firmly straight men were.

Arthur was frowning, brow tight, and Eames's forging eye didn't fall for his attempting, casual tone. This had hurt Arthur; Eames could see it in the set of his shoulders and the way he couldn't look at Eames for more than a moment.

"I'm so sorry," Eames said uselessly. Arthur have a shakily little nod, running his fingers through his fringe. "I'm not—it's not a problem," he rambled. "I just don't. I'm not gay."

"It's fine," Arthur muttered. He brushed his thumb over an eyebrow, a familiar nervous tick. He swallowed nervously. "I just, you. You call me darling." Dark, sloe eyes met his at an angle, trying desperately not to look as though an entire world of carpet had just been yanked out from underneath his feet.

"I'm not gay," Eames said again. He had never felt so pointless and cruel.

"You call me darling," Arthur repeated quietly. Eames winced, realising what he had thought was simple, easy friendship and teasing, Arthur had took to be a year and three jobs of earnest flirting. "Love, dearest, sweet, sweetheart. I asked you out. You said. Yes." His voice caught in the most composed way. It was truly Arthurian in its sincerity. Arthur bit his lip. Eames had been kissed by that lip. It turned red under worrying, white teeth.

"I didn't mean—Arthur," Eames pleaded. He felt terrible. Arthur forced a smile. It looked pained and weak, like the soft, inner edge of ripped toast.

"Miscommunication," Arthur said lamely. "Look," he began, looking away again. "If... If this were to get out," he said hesitantly, "it would cost me. I don't know what I can do to keep this between us, but I—"

"I wouldn't out you," Eames assured him easily. He was still reeling from the kiss and the way Arthur was clearly terrified he had just lost everything. He couldn't believe he'd led Arthur on for so long. What kind of tart did that?

"Right," Arthur said, nodding. "I–um. I am going to walk very quickly in the other direction now," he continued, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "Unrelated reasons," he lied pathetically. He wouldn't look at Eames. "I have an apartment, which is, is in this direction, so. There's—" He cleared his throat, stumbling quickly over words. Arthur never stammered. Eames's heart twisted. "Um, I will see you, tomorrow. We'll. At work. Where neither of us is gay," he finished lamely.

He stuck a very smooth, professional hand out into the mile wide gap between them. Eames took it and shook it gently.

"I really am very sorry," he said again. "I really am—" Arthur pulled his hand back and brushed it—brushed it!—off on his hip unconsciously.

"I'll see you at work," Arthur repeated. He nodded and turned halfway round, hesitated, nodded again and turned so his back was to Eames. He stuck his hands in the pockets of dark wash, straight-legged jeans and walked very quickly in the other direction.

Eames watched him go, ducked, embarrassed little head and all. He had never felt so rubbish in his life.

//

"All I need to hear is that you're not mine. You're not mine.  
All I want to hear is that you're not mine. You're not mine.  
You take a second, take a year.  
You took me out and took me in and told me all of this and then you take moment, take a year.  
You helped me out, I listened in. You told me all of this and then—"

//

Eames figured out that Arthur was too fun to not be friends with when they finished their fifth job together.

It was, again, Arthur who put forward the invitation. Eames had been politely avoiding Arthur (he would want his accidental boyfriend to avoid him, after all) since their last date. He was being professional, but admittedly distant. He didn't tease, not even on blush-and-retreat days.

As they left the office building they'd just stolen from, sending their extractor off on their own with the information, Arthur kicked at the ground. The sidewalk was empty and the streetlight cast an artificial, orange sheen over the rained, wet pavement of the street.

"Almost anticlimactic," Eames joked. Arthur laughed at how easy the job had been. It was rare for them to take such small jobs. Eames had taken because he needed the money; he wondered why Arthur had stooped to this level.

"Almost," he agreed. He scuffed his toe again. "Do you want to go celebrate?" Eames raised a dry brow jokingly and watched Arthur panic. "I mean, just as friends! Colleagues, even. Unless you don't want to because—"

"Because?" Eames prompted when Arthur stumbled silent.

"Because of," he began, before lamely finishing, "I'm gay."

"Sorry?" Eames echoed. Arthur shrugged. He stuck his hands in his pockets roughly. He was quite hard on his clothes, always shoving up sleeves and plucking at buttons and yanking at ties and ripping through the knees of expensive trousers tripping up the stairs of the metro. Eames had a louder style (he played with patterns and prints, while Arthur played with more modern cuts), but he was much quieter in how he wore his clothes.

"You've been avoiding me since I came out to you," Arthur said quietly. He wouldn't look at Eames. "There aren't a lot of people in this line of work who would be OK with working with me if they knew, and I came right out and kissed you. Frankly, I thought you might have hit me. At the very least, I thought I'd be outed."

"I thought you would want me to keep my distance," Eames said. He had, since the debacle with Arthur, found himself more aware of the general attitude towards homosexuality in dreamshare. By and large, it was strangely a conservative group. He hadn't considered how much Arthur had risked pursuing him: his heart, for sure, but also his reputation and livelihood if Eames had turned around and given him away to the whole world. It made sense to him now that Arthur had waited an entire year to ask him out, to risk everything. He wondered then, often, what had made him worth it. "You seemed a bit hurt—"

"I was just embarrassed—" Arthur lied urgently.

"I don't have a problem with you, in any case," Eames promised. "I am delighted to be friends with you. I'm happy to keep your secret. I was decidedly less thrilled to date you."

"That's a relief," Arthur chuckled. As always, his light, easy tone hid a strong, sincere emotion. "Well. Good then."

They went to a bar, some innocuous, homey thing with scarce lighting, dark brown walls, clean tables and sticky floors. Eames ordered straight vodka and smiled condescendingly at Arthur's cranberry juice dilute. By the time they were halfway to drunk, hours of easy conversation and hearty laughs had left Eames with the type of semi-permanent smile one only got from time with good friends. Eames had begun winking at pretty girls and Arthur had begun demanding Eames let him be his wingman.

"I could be an in-trumental part of getting you laid, bro. I'm super good at being a wingman. Why winking?" a tipsy Arthur asked, watching the blonde girl blush and teeter with her drink back over to her twittering friends.

"Winking works, but I'm not actually planning on going home with someone tonight," Eames said, watching Arthur miss his mouth with the rim of his glass. He licked at the drink on his chin. Cranberry juice dripped off the counter; Eames scooped up Arthur's phone from the spreading mess of the bar and tucked it in the point man's jacket safely.

"Shit," Arthur muttered, smearing the heel of his hand along the splash mark on his shirt aimlessly. Eames took a moment to mourn that silky, white shirt as he watched Arthur rub in a wet, pink stain. "I'm honestly not this clumsy usually."

"You put your elbow in the butter dish on our first date," Eames pointed out. Arthur coughed. His ears turned bright red and Eames laughed, a real, belly laugh, at how easy it was for him to fluster this tricky, usually-unflappable man.

"I really liked you!" Arthur protested. His eyes were bright with alcohol and his cheeks were happily flushed. He shoved Eames's shoulder good-naturedly. "As if you've never done something embarrassing on a vest date."

"Do you mean a first date?" Eames asked with a grin. Arthur closed his eyes, raised his brows and nodded.

"I said," he said. He opened his eyes and they swivelled over to something behind Eames. He glanced over. Arthur was staring at the bartender, like he had when they first came in. Eames turned back just in time to see Arthur wink at the bartender. The barman—a brunet who was built much like Eames and betrayed Arthur's type—accepted the wink with a wry grin and placed another drink next to Arthur's mostly-spilled one on his way by. Arthur beamed at him as he returned to work, circling the bar to serve some woman in a pantsuit.

"I got a present," Arthur informed Eames proudly.

"Indeed you did," Eames agreed, humouring him. "I once threw up on a girl's lawn on a first date."

"Really?" Arthur asked, turning away from staring at the bartender. "What did you throw up?"

Eames frowned at the question. "It was supposed to be a lovely morning walk in the park, so I had eaten for breakfast, quite nervously, a plum."

"A purple plum?" Arthur demanded. Eames took a swig of Arthur's cranberry-vodka monstrosity. He was not nearly drunk enough for Arthur's drunk questions. "That's my present vodka!" Arthur protested.

"Yes," Eames replied. "I vomited a purple plum all over this girl's front garden."

"The yellow plums freak me out,” Arthur told the counter.

"She had, it turns out, only agreed to go out with me because I had a sensitive soul and clean teeth," Eames continued blithely. He bypassed Arthur's plum problem. "So she asked me to not come back. I was sixteen and she was gorgeous so I thought it was the end of the world. Listened to sad music for weeks."

"Story of my life," Arthur said sympathetically. He looked over at the bartender again and smiled at something. Eames very purposefully did not look over. "I'ma get some tonight," Arthur bragged, and then winced and rubbed his face. "Sorry. Too much information?"

"I won't need details of what your night concludes with," Eames said, resisting the urge to laugh out loud at Arthur's worried little face. "I think I might take off. Wouldn't want to cockblock you." Arthur snorted, picking up his present vodka. Eames clapped him on the shoulder and Arthur beamed.

"Hey," Arthur called after Eames gathered his suit coat and paid for their drinks. Arthur was blissfully unaware he had no tab to settle up. Eames halted, smiling down at Arthur, tilting slightly in his buzzed state. Arthur was much drunker than he was. If it was anyone other than Arthur the capable, Eames might have hesitated to leave them alone and drunk with the intent of going home with a stranger.

"Thanks for the winking tip," he whispered conspiratorially. He tapped the side of his nose with his index and pointed at Eames. Eames laughed.

"Any time," he promised. Arthur turned back to his barman and Eames turned to go home. He had a niggling feeling that he shouldn't leave Arthur there, but a glance back at the two eagerly flirting brunets made him push the heavy door open and clear off.

When he was checking out of the hotel early the next morning, slightly hungover, as he had been slightly drunk, he saw the most wonderful thing.

Arthur, complete with stained, ruined silk shirt, was headed towards the front desk. He was carrying a rumpled suit coat over one arm in the ape of a waiter's towel, and a rueful smile on his face appeared when he spotted Eames. He'd lost his tie at some point, and his gaped collar revealed a lovely hickey right on his collarbone. His hair was an absolute wreck. Eames was acutely aware that he was dressed impeccably in a perfect, pressed suit and Arthur was missing his tie and a button on his shirt.

"Well, well, well, William Tell," Eames called out. He probably had a positively shit-eating grin on his face, and he wasn't even ashamed. Arthur spread his arms slightly as if to say et, voilà! "What a walk of shame. Fancy meeting you here."

"This isn't awkward," Arthur said factually, shaking his hand hello. He looked delightedly exhausted.

"Late night? Out with a business client? Someone who sells Tide To-Go, surely," Eames teased, plucking at Arthur's stained shirt. Arthur pushed his hand away with a laugh. "I'm glad you had a good time," he said seriously.

"I did," Arthur promised. "You did," he accused with a furrowed brow and a smiling mouth. "We had fun!" He sounded almost surprised. "That bar closes at three, by the way." Eames checked his watch. It was only eight. "I was there drinking and chatting him up until he got off work. I'm pretty sure I didn't pay for anything."

"Is that why you look so tired?" Eames asked. "Not from rambunctious sex?" Arthur turned positively red, embarrassed to high heaven. Eames cackled.

"Can't complain," Arthur admitted. He glanced down at Eames's Hermès valise and sighed. "You're off then?" Eames frowned at the sigh.

"You're feeling fine? Why so sad?" Eames asked. Arthur shrugged and tugged at the back of his own collar.

"No reason," he said. He shrugged again to force his shirt to lie back down where he'd pulled at it. "I'll see you round? Where are you working next?"

"Not another milk run, that's for sure," Eames said. "Dunno. We'll see."

"Alright," Arthur nodded at Eames's luggage, taking Eames hand in a farewell shake. He sighed again, giving a troubling frown. Eames was about to ask if he really was alright when he smiled absently and looked up at Eames. "I'm still drunk actually, so I think I'm going to go pass out." He was smiling that warm smile he gave Eames every now and again. It made him feel distinctly sorry Arthur's feelings for him were going to waste. What could be worse than festering a constant heartache? It was a wonder Arthur could stand to be near him.

"Take care, yeah?" Eames called as Arthur wandered over to the elevators. Arthur gave him a wave and the doors closed with a ding.

"Sign here, sir," the petite old woman behind the counter instructed. He signed Lester B. Pearson with a flourish and left. 

In the taxi on the way to the airport, he patted his pockets, hating the nagging feeling he had in his head. He was sure he'd forgotten something. He had his phone, both passports and the coaster he'd stolen from the bar the night before. He touched the little cranberry stain and tucked everything away. 

//

"So little to say but so much time. Despite my empty mouth, the words are in my mind.  
Please wear the face: the one where you smile because you’re lighting up my heart."

//

Eames learned Arthur actually did honest-to-god love him in the worst way he imagined it could have happened.

It was about four years after they'd met—Arthur would have known exactly. Two years before Inception. Nine months before Mal would die, but neither of them had an inkling that was in the cards, even if it was one of dreamshare's worst kept secrets that the Cobb duo had fallen into Limbo. That they had found a third level of dreaming before they fell.

It was all their architect could talk about. Nash was obsessed. Eames would maintain, even years later, that it was his preoccupation with Cobb that made him forget which door led to the linens and which to the toilet. The mark opened the right door to the wrong room and his military was on them like a snap. Thank god Cobb hadn't actually been on this job; Nash might have built the wrong apartment altogether. Maybe he could have built Nairobi and not a sweltering Madrid, complete with a broken window fan.

Arthur, ever the gentleman, shot Eames awake in the back of the head. Eames had no idea it was coming until he jolted awake to see Arthur sit up seconds later with a muttered curse. Arthur practically ripped the IV from his arm. 

"Asshole!" he snapped. "You screwed up the doors!"

"I'm sorry!" Nash blubbered. "I didn't know he was going to go into one of them!" Arthur ignored him, desperately winding PASIV lines. Eames rose to check the mark. Sedatives were still holding him thickly asleep (it was so hot they were afraid he would sweat them out), but they had to hightail it out nonetheless.

"Get the fuck out of here, Nash," Arthur ordered sharply. "We'll meet you at the safehouse. Go get Megha." Nash hurried out, and hopefully he'd remember, the useless fuck, to fetch their chemist.

Eames followed Arthur out of the room. He shut the door quietly behind them, so as to not alert any of the other people in the building. Arthur's cautionary hand on his forearm told him it was too late to escape detection.

Arthur pulled him quickly, silently, in the other direction, one hand tight on Eames's wrist and the other tight on the PASIV's metal handle. Eames glanced over his shoulder. He didn't know what Arthur had seen, but he trusted Arthur and would run blindly after him any day.

They made it outside before shouting henchmen caught up to them.

"What are you—" Eames demanded, letting Arthur push them into an alley. He all but slammed Eames into the wall. Arthur pressed the PASIV into Eames's hands and pickpocketed the gun.

"You started the extraction; you know more than I do," Arthur said sharply. "Take this. Run." Eames gaped at him.

"You prick. I'm not going to leave you here—"

Gunfire pounded the bricks above Eames's head. Arthur grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him down.

"Go, go, go!" Arthur shouted. Eames took off down the alley, Arthur hot on his heels. Gunfire rang out behind them, following them. Arthur fired back, halting his running momentarily. Someone screamed a curse, and voices rang angrily in foreign babble to Eames's ears.

Eames led them down alley after alley, trying to avoid the streets.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Eames gasped, out of breath as he nearly ran full tilt into a fence. He'd turned down an alley that led to a very shallow dead end: tall, barbed fence labelled with a small sign to post no bills left them trapped. Nowhere to hide and no way to climb the barbed wire. Arthur collided with his back.

"Putain de merde," Arthur said. "You should have gone when you could have." He leaned around the corner and fired to keep the other man back.

"How many are there?" Eames asked.

"One, now," Arthur said. "There were three. I shot one in the shoulder; the other stayed back with him."

"How many shots does he have?" Eames demanded.

"He's fired twelve," Arthur said. Eames could never understand how Arthur kept track in the heat of the moment. "So he has anywhere from three to zero."

"How many do you have?" Arthur's role in the con meant they only had Eames's weapon; he didn't have his gun going into the extraction. It had been too risky, for all the good it had done. The job was blown anyway.

"Two," Arthur said. He tried to lean around the alley wall to look at their tail. A gunshot rang out and he pulled back into the alley with a gasp.

"Fuck," he said. "We are so fucked."

The man who had stayed with the thug Arthur shot down had apparently circled round; he appeared at the other end of the alley with a shout. The man lifted his gun as Eames turned to look.

Cliché as it was: it all happened so fast. Arthur stepped in front of him, shouting his name, and it felt like he fired a split second before the thug did. Eames saw the other man fall before he felt Arthur collapse against his chest. He dropped the PASIV and his arms wound around Arthur. He cursed, lowering them to the ground.

He grabbed the gun, turning as best he could with a bleeding man in his lap, and shot the final guy as he tried to one up them and finish the job. His aim was not as exact as Arthur's; his headshot didn't neatly pick out an eye.

Arthur made a small, awful noise, pressing a hand to his chest. The bullet had hit below his collarbone, cutting through a pectoral and making Arthur cough wetly.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Eames demanded, stroking Arthur's loose, sweat-damp hair back off his forehead almost unconsciously. "You could've yelled duck." Arthur laughed a tiny and pathetic chuckle. "You took a bullet for me," Eames said softly. He stared at the injured man in his lap, unsure if he was flattered or horrified.

"I'll always step in front of you," Arthur admitted. He smiled up at Eames, and through the pained glaze of his eyes, Eames saw the same kind of adoration his grandfather had always given his wife: warm, glowing and absolutely, completely and truly, full of love.

"Arthur," he whispered. Arthur's smile didn't fade; red teeth and all. "You shouldn't—"

"But I do," Arthur said simply. "Too late."

//

"You hate the tender-hearted torch song. You set a flame to my sentiment, my sentimental tune.  
Now you know, you know it now. And so. Now you know, you know it now.  
Hard-hearted, don't worry, I'm ready for the fight.  
Unnerved, the nerve. You're nervous. Nervous that I'm right."

//

Eames stared at his girlfriend. She was asleep; beautiful. Madeline was a chemist and it showed in the myriad of chemical burn scars on her hands and wrists. She had one creamy scar on the mocha skin of her cheekbone, which she was really self-conscious about, but Eames thought might be the most beautiful thing about her. Or it might, he thought appreciatively, be her eyes, coffee black with flecks of dark green. Or it might be the little sounds she made when he fucked her, or the way she tucked her tongue between her teeth when she smiled big and genuine.

He wandered into the sitting room, wiping his hands dry from dishwashing. He felt at the key he had made, tucked safely in the pocket of his trousers and took a steadying breath. It was time for this, he reminded himself. It was time to take the next step. He cared so much about Madeline, and if he wanted to be right for her, he had to prove it. Arthur had taken a fucking bullet for him, after all. The least he could do was commit. He wanted to look at her the way Arthur looked at him, because he was lucky enough to be able to flaunt it. He could show her off and commit and make all of the moves he knew would get Arthur killed. How could he not take advantage of that opportunity? 

He sat on the edge of the couch, brushing a bit of her hair back from her eyes. She snuffled and smiled up at him in the dim light. She groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes. 

"You awful man," she grumbled in her disgustingly endearing Newcastle accent. He stroked her hair again. "I was sleeping." He laughed softly at her hateful tone. "No," she amended, lowering her arm and letting it settle on his. He shifted, tangling her little hand in his bigger one. "It is late. I should go home."

"You should move in with me," he said bravely. She widened her eyes and stared. "Then it wouldn't be late. It wouldn't be you having to leave; you could just stay and be here."

"Eamesy," she admonished. "That was a bit of a bomb to drop."

"I'm just suggesting," he explained. She pulled her hand away and sat up. "We've been together for over a year," he pointed out. "We decided to work together instead of taking a break last month. That's kind of... I just." She didn't look happy so he looked away. "You mean a lot to me, Madeline, that's all. Why do you have to go home? Why can't I be your home?"

"What?" she asked. "Since when do I mean a lot to you?" He frowned at her.

"Since things started to get serious," he said easily. She stared at him as though he'd begun randomly speaking Latin or Cherokee. "Since you started spending the night more often than not. Since you started leaving your stuff here, since your shampoo moved into the shower and since the bed started smelling like your perfume." She looked away uncomfortably. "Nothing has to happen now," he acquiesced. "I just thought I'd ask. I thought it was time."

"Eames, that's a big step," she hedged. He nodded. "For someone who claims I mean a lot, you don't show it very often—"

"What? I show it!" he protested indignantly. "I let you leave your clothes on the floor of the bedroom!" She raised a brow, unconvinced by this. "Look around, Mads," he ordered, gesturing at his apartment. "This place is spotless, but for your scarf, your bag, and the pile of laundry you leave at the foot of our bed."

"Your bed," she said firmly. "If it bothers you—"

"It doesn't," he insisted, only half-lying. "It's just not something I would let someone who wasn't important get away with." 

"Exactly," she said. He blinked at her, surprised she was being this dense.

"Exactly," he agreed. "You're important." She scoffed.

"You're a freak. You enjoy doing laundry. Why would you want to live with a slob?" she demanded. 

"Because I love you," he admitted. She cursed and looked away. That was not a good sign. He felt sick. The key in his pocket felt much heavier than it was. "Madeline. I let you borrow my pens and you never give them back.” She didn’t react as tho that was the declaration it was. “But, if it's too soon, it's too soon. I can. Wait. You can go home; it's late..." he trailed off.

"I'll think about it," she promised. He nodded. He leaned over and kissed her, firmly and deeply. She let him, tangling her fingers in his hair, pulling him over to her. She felt so small against him, slight and delicate and soft. She was perfect and amazing and beautiful. 

He couldn't help but whisper it out loud as she pulled at his belt, lowering his jeans and pushing him so she could straddle him on the couch. He ran his hands up her thighs, up her skirt and rubbing her as she didn't reply. She groaned and kissed his neck.

"Shut up," she ordered. That didn't feel encouraging, but she sank down onto him, and he promptly forgot about the key in the jeans across the room.

She was still there when he woke up. She didn't run when he gave her the key. She stayed all week. She stayed all month, and they began smiling over breakfast.

//

"I'm running out of ways to make you see I want you to stay here beside me.  
I won't be OK and I won't pretend I am.  
So just tell me today and take my hand. Please take my hand...  
Just say yes. Just say there's nothing holding you back.  
It's not a test, nor a trick of the mind, only love."

//

Arthur hated Madeline. She was a good chemist, very good. She was precise and accurate. She warned Arthur about specific side effects when they tested new compounds for risky jobs (something most chemists forgot to do until Arthur was curled up in pain from light sensitivity or vomiting from vertigo). She was even quite funny, and Arthur loved bad puns.

But he hated her, as of four months ago, when a call to Eames was answered by her giggling, bell-like voice. Eames had been in the shower, she said, and she'd pass on his message. Regretfully, he'd invited her along on the job. He wanted a different feel for the dream than the standard mix offered, and if Eames was dating her, Arthur wasn't going to be a cockblock and get a chemist he didn't enjoy working with just to be contrary.

And now, he fucking hated her, after three weeks on the job, weeks of watching Eames flirt with her and kiss her goodbye when she slipped out at noon, done experimenting with Arthur for the day. She was a competent person but she was messy and loud and giggly. She had enormously curly, black hair. She was a morning person. She didn't drink. She didn't gamble, or smoke or enjoy bars and loud music. She hated Eames's taste in clothes. She was a vegan. What kind of international, ruthless mind criminal was a vegan? She wasn't very clean, and Eames was almost obsessive about keeping his homes neat, so it was a wonder they hadn't killed each other over mess. She didn't appreciate his sarcasm, nor did she think he was as brilliant as he was. She was wrong for him in every way except for the fact she made him smile. 

That reason trumped all the others, unfortunately.

Even Arthur couldn’t deny that he liked the way she made Eames smile. The man took his work very seriously; he was a sharp man and even when he constantly poked fun at Arthur and their other coworkers, Arthur could see the way he stressed about his forgeries, the way he practiced every letter of someone’s signature and every shift of a mark’s weight endlessly. Arthur liked that Madeleine could make him forget, and relax. Breathe. 

"You’re coming home at a reasonable hour tonight?" Madeline asked Eames, winding her arms around his neck where he sat in his tattered, old computer chair, leaned back and reading a book on organic chemistry. He had to study up if he wanted to forge the mark's wife and laboratory assistant. One of Eames's big, strong hands came up to cup her forearm. He smiled warmly.

"Of course, darling," he promised her. "Eight o'clock. You can quiz me." She beamed, kissing his ear and straightening up.

"I'll see you then," she chirped, letting her hand drag across Eames's broad shoulders as she crossed to leave. She gave Arthur a polite smile as she noticed him watching. He forced a smile back, giving a small wave over his worktable.

Eames followed her gaze and chuckled as she shut the door behind her. He said softly, "You hate Madeline." He turned back to his textbook and Arthur frowned.

"I don't—" he lied unconvincingly. "She's a great chemist." He looked pointedly back down at his computer. Eames laughed; Arthur bristled. He hated being so transparent to Eames. It was hard enough being around him all day when he was so fucking beautiful it hurt to breathe sometimes. How could he be in a perpetual state of perfection? Arthur had seen him after a four-day stretch trapped in a snowed-in airport in Kiev, which was a toilet. Who looked gorgeous and smiled so genuinely after that? "What?"

"You hate her because she's with me," Eames prodded. He sounded childishly pleased; thrilled someone was jealous over him, like children with a new toy on the block. He placed his book on his desk and began fiddling with his camera. 

"I just don't think she's right for you," he said stubbornly. "The two of you don't seem to mesh."

"Oh, we mesh," Eames assured him with a leer. "We mesh and it is glorious."

"That is too much information, and is disgusting," Arthur snapped (he stumbled over his words). His ears felt hot. Eames's laugh confirmed he was in fact blushing. 

"You're jealous!" he declared. "Oh, dearest, what will we do with you?"

"I wouldn't say that," Arthur said coolly, clicking pointlessly on his laptop's trackpad to seem busy. He highlighted and unhighlighted a passage of text in his summary of the mark's criminal history. The blue bars seemed to mock him.

"Doesn't mean it's not true," Eames retorted. Arthur hated this. He hated it. He hated the way Eames had his whole heart and the way little things like this cut him deep every now and then. It didn't make sense. What made Eames so perfect? What made him worth the twisting sensation in his gut whenever he made it clear, in the thousand accidental, unintentional ways he did, that he was straight and Arthur could never have him? There were over a dozen forgers out there. Admittedly, Eames was the best, but Arthur worked with idiots often enough. Why didn't he just avoid Eames?

"You're such an asshole," he grumbled, genuinely turning back to his work. A few moments of silence was interrupted by the loud shutter of Eames's ancient Rebel XT camera. Arthur looked up just in time for the flash to make him close his eyes in surprise. "I'm certain these photos are wholly attractive." For a long moment, Eames's only reply was the snick-snick of a shutter.

"Only the best for MySpace," Eames agreed, his attention on the small display screen and what were no doubt complete wastes of his memory card. "What are you doing tonight, then?" Eames asked brightly. Arthur shrugged. Eames practically tossed the camera aside as he scooped up his textbook again. Arthur winced at the blatant disrespect for technology.

"Probably just working," he replied. "There cannot be a stone unturned for this job."

"You work too hard, darling," Eames told him as he loudly flipped a page in his textbook. "When's the last time you took that stick out of your arse and got laid?" Arthur coughed in surprise. Eames laughed again at his hot, red face. Arthur cursed his pale skin. Stupid Madeline never blushed, with her black skin and perfect, stupid pores. "Oh, that long then?"

"Fuck off," Arthur demanded. He glared playfully at Eames. "I did have a hot lay recently. Last name, business, first name, none-of-yah."

"What a witty rejoinder," Eames said smugly. "I win."

"You can't win," Arthur pointed out for the sixth billionth time. "This is a conversation, not a sports event. There is not a score keep or a referee." Eames smiled softly at his book, pulling a highlight from behind his ear. "Not every moment of this friendship is an evaluation."

"I beg, sweetheart, to differ."

//

"I took the train back, back to where I came from. I took it all alone; it's been so long, I know.  
Imagine me, there, my heart asleep with no air, begging: Ocean, please,  
help me drown these memories."

//

Arthur winced as Jack all but slammed his empty mug down beside the sink. Arthur braced his hands on the counter, giving a heavy sigh. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and the sink was filled with soapy water and the dishes from dinner. Jack had been tense and strange all night, asking bizarre pointed questions about Arthur's last job. It had been a quick one, a two month break from their relationship to pull ten grand in Miami. As Jack began to storm away, Arthur turned around.

"OK. What's wrong?" he asked, keeping his tone perfectly neutral and concerned. Jack turned back to him and huffed out a laugh, pushing his light brown hair out of his green eyes. Arthur raised a brow.

"Apparently nothing," Jack answered in a falsely bright tone. "Except that you seem to think I'm a fucking idiot." Arthur ran thru the conversation they'd had that night thru his head. He knew he could be kind of a condescending asshole, mostly in an unintentional fashion, but he didn't think he'd said anything genuinely offensive that night. The conversation had been stilted since Jack arrived and began with his sharp, wayward interrogation; it's not like he had ample opportunity. Jack was a discreet chemist with a home base in Greenland; he was in the same business as Arthur. He was someone who understood long travels and odd hours. There was no reason for him to think Arthur had been doing anything other than working on this job, as he seemed to be implying.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, suddenly exhausted.

"You think I'm an idiot," Jack repeated. He held Arthur's gaze like it was a challenge.

"Care to expand on that?" Arthur asked. He looked away to wipe suds from his hands, scooping a forest green dish towel up off the counter.

"You know, I was wrong about you;" Jack began, "you're a great boyfriend." Arthur blinked, methodically wiping damp from his left thumb. He nodded slowly.

"OK," he said. "That's..." Not something that matches up with your behaviour cues, he thought, but finished, "good."

"And," Jack continued, lifting his coat from the back of a chair, "your fuckbuddy, Eames, is a really lucky guy."

"Oh, for fuck's sakes," Arthur cried, aiming to throw the towel onto the counter. It slid down the cupboard and pooled on the floor. Jack scoffed.

"What? You think I don't fucking hear the way you talk about him?" Jack fired back. He sounded like a soap opera star, all indignation with no cause. "You don't think I noticed you dropped everything—dropped me!—to go do a rush job in Miami at the drop of a hat for him?"

"I didn’t drop you; you’re in this business and you know how it is,” Arthur said calmly, logically. Jack rolled his eyes. He fiddled with a pocket on his coat, avoiding Arthur’s eyes. “What was I supposed to tell him? ‘I’m with my boyfriend, so don’t sell the two of us out please’?’” Arthur was certain Eames would never do such a thing and that Arthur’s secret was safe, but the point should have made Jack guilty and retreat. They both knew the risks in their business, and Jack didn’t have the reputation Arthur did. He would be taken out the same way those lesbians in Aarhus had been.

“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Jack said pig-headedly. "You came home with a bullet hole in your chest. You took a fucking bullet for him." 

"I took a bullet for my team, because I am the point and that is what we do," Arthur snapped. He didn't tell Jack he had in fact jumped in front of Eames, very deliberately and without thought. “He's not even gay, Jack," Arthur added. "He is a friend. A good friend, but a very straight, firmly heterosexual friend. I'm not fucking him, and I don't cheat on people."

"You have to think I'm an idiot if you think I'll buy that!" Jack shouted, waving his arms, jacket flapping uselessly where it was clenched in his right fist. "You're really going to commit to this?"

"Commit to what?" Arthur retorted furiously. "The truth? Eames is not gay," he said slowly, shaking his head demonstratively. Now he was being a condescending asshole. "We are not involved sexually or romantically."

"You know what, Arthur?" Jack began, "You're a piece of work."

"You knew that when you got involved with me," Arthur pointed out. "You don't get to play the victim when you're the one accusing me of being disloyal. You know who I am, and you knew it when you started this. You knew I was an asshole, but I am a faithful asshole. And you wanted to get involved anyways."

"I got involved with you because you were an option," Jack shouted hurtfully. Arthur felt like he'd been slapped. His mouth fell open a little, he knew, but he was a little too shocked to snap it shut. "A fucking option. Gay and with as much to lose as I have if this relationship got out. Mutually assured destruction is the best deterrent from an attack."

"I wouldn't fucking attack you," Arthur murmured finally, pulling himself together enough to respond. "I'm not that guy. I wouldn't sell you out, especially not because outing you would protect me."

"But you'll cheat on me now that I care about you?" Jack asked pointedly. Arthur's annoyance and rage took over his hurt for now.

"Putain, I’ve never cheated—!"

"I hear the way you talk about him," Jack interjected, desperately. He sounded so defeated. "I see the way you smile when he calls. I know that he's got more of your heart than I ever will."

"Jack, it's not..."

But Arthur couldn't finish. Because, in a way, it was like that. It was just like that. He knew his feelings for Eames had never gone away. If anything, they'd grown. He knew they were pointless and painful and ugly. He knew that he didn't love Jack the way he loved Eames, and he certainly didn't have the attraction to him, the desire for more, that he had had the first day he met Eames. His father used to say everyone had one shot at a soul mate, and he'd lost his when Arthur's mother died. Arthur worried that he lost his by falling for a wonderful, delightfully prickly, quirk of a straight man. He worried that Jack could never—that nobody could ever—come close to making him feel the way Eames did.

And, fuck, if that didn't feel like a knife in the chest and acid at the bottom of his stomach, weighing him down and preventing him from moving. Preventing him from moving forward. Because maybe Eames was supposed to be his soulmate, and fate also made him unattainable and perfect and straight. Maybe he was meant to pine, and wait in the wings and hope in vain. Maybe, he thought, thinking of his relationship with Jack (lovely, sweet, gay Jack), he was meant to just recognise those feelings as what they were, move on, and find them somewhere else. But if Arthur really did let him go, instead of giving only a half-hearted attempt with other clever, brawny men, he was afraid that he would be as hollow as his father had been as a widow, that he would never feel a fraction of that feeling again. Maybe he would never get his heart back from Eames and nothing would make him as happy as not having him.

"It's not," he tried again. He sounded feeble to his own ears. Jack laughed again, a harsh, slow, bitter sound. "Jack, it isn't."

"It is," Jack said, almost gently. "You love him and you're using me to tell yourself you're not a lovesick, pathetic loser. But guess what, Arthur?"

"What?" he asked dimly, defeated, when Jack paused like he bizarrely expected Arthur to take a guess.

"You are," Jack promised. He slipped his jacket on and crossed thru Arthur's kitchenette. He moved in a furious, indignant cloud of his cedar-scent and his Zenga suit. He pulled the door open.

"Wait, Jack!" Arthur called. He rounded the fridge. Jack was glaring impatiently. "I'll... Look, I'll call you, ok?" Jack laughed wetly.

"Don't you fucking dare."

//

"And I just can't look; it's killing me, taking control. Jealousy, turning saints into the sea.  
Turning thru sick lullaby, choking on your alibi. But it's just the price I pay.  
Destiny is calling me. Open up your eager eyes.”

//

"As much as it is good to see you," Eames began as Arthur signalled the barkeep over for more booze, "and it really is, dear, I can't help wondering why you're so intent on getting drunk on what you claim is a business call."

"It is business," Arthur promised. The old, tottering barkeep left Arthur a new glass. “Dziękuję.” Eames hated Poland. He felt out of place and stupid, since he very much didn't speak Polish. Arthur and the barkeep had laughed at his attempt to order drinks. Arthur fit right it. He even looked the part, wearing the same dorky jumper the rest of the Poles seemed to. 

"Well? I have someone at home waiting for me, you know," Eames pointed out. "I didn't tell her I'd be out late when I left this morning." Arthur nodded tightly, his smile fading. Something in his frown made Eames think this particular bad mood was not brought on by Arthur's attraction and his own unattainability. He finally thought Arthur had been telling the truth and this was business. "What's going on?" he asked seriously.

"I honestly was in the neighbourhood," Arthur offered, blatantly avoiding the question. "I'm only doing research now, verifying some rumours. I was in town visiting family and you popped up on my radar." Eames wondered what it meant for Arthur's psyche that he drank vodka straight in Poland and diluted everywhere else. 

"Your family is from Łódź?" Eames echoed. Arthur nodded. "Aren't you Jewish?" he asked, impressed. "How did they manage to survive that?" Arthur ignored him. "You even look Jewish, fuck, I'm impressed. No wonder you're such a hard man to track." Arthur rolled his eyes aggressively.

"I am here on business," Arthur said with a glare. "Rumours I am being paid to confirm."

"Your accent gets stronger when you're around Polish people," Eames said, mostly to wind Arthur up. He never intended on forging Arthur but he knew that the possibility that he could drove Arthur crazy. He scooped up his drink, grinning as Arthur downed his in one go. 

"Krell has heard there's a queer in dreamshare," Arthur said flatly. Eames froze. Arthur's gaze didn't falter. "I'm the best and he wants me to see if anyone has heard the same things he has."

"You're serious?" he asked, shocked. His glass found its way to the counter. Arthur waited, staring.

"Have you heard anything?" he repeated. Eames looked at him, looked closer. He didn't look tired; he looked scared, almost dead on his feet. Eames understood the need for a drink. He slid his glass over to Arthur, who downed it. Quality vodka, smooth as a river stone. "A rumour, a whisper, a word?" he begged.

"No," Eames admitted. "But it's not like I keep an ear on rumour. Do you want me to ask around, or—?"

"No," Arthur said to the arms he had crossed on the bar. "I don't know what the best way to deal with this is, so don't." Eames touched his shoulder consolingly. Arthur shifted, a millimetre, and Eames got the cue and moved his hand away. 

"This might just be his paranoia," Eames offered hesitantly. "It might not even be a rumour about you." Arthur shrugged. "For all we know, it's someone else."

"How am I supposed to dig this up?" he asked. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "How am I supposed to investigate? Am I supposed to turn in someone who is the same as me? If I find something, what if it's me? What if my digging makes people think it's me? What if I don't dig and it makes him think I'm protecting whoever this rumour is about? Or that I'm covering my own ass? What if—"

"Arthur," Eames admonished. "It's not like you to be irrational and panic. He asked you for a favor. You can always tell him to fuck off." Arthur scoffed but remained silent. "What's the point in worrying about it? Just..." He hesitated. Arthur looked up. "It'll be OK." Arthur looked away. 

“Pieprzyć,” Arthur said to himself. 

Eames didn't know how to fill the silence. 

"I'm scared," Arthur admitted. "I didn't get into this business to have to hide every day. I didn't know this danger and by the time I did, it was too late to get out. Now what?"

"Arthur," Eames tried again. Arthur ignored him.

"What, do I find a woman to pretend with?" Arthur demanded. "Do I stay alone until I die? Do I wait until someone finds out? Wait until they kill me? Krell wants this guy dead."

"No one is going to kill you," Eames said easily. "You're too valuable to kill. Besides, everyone knows the CIA has a claim on you." Arthur laughed bitterly. 

"Great," he sighed. "I'm too valuable and risky to kill. If they cut me out, I still have somnacin withdrawal to look forward to." Eames winced. It was supposed to be horrible, leaving dreams behind. It reminded him of Yusuf's lab, and all the poor souls who couldn't handle leaving, for whom it made the addiction worse. All those people went crazy from it. Would Arthur break? He didn't want to find out. "I'll go from point to, at best, distance research consult? I can't."

"It will be OK," he promised. "Do you want to get completely smashed tonight? Would that help?" Arthur laughed again and it sounded sour and painful to Eames. 

"You have someone to get home to," Arthur reminded him. He slapped down some money and grabbed his jacket.

"I'll stay out if you need me," Eames replied. "You're my friend. Bros before hos and all that." Arthur smiled. He stood and Eames sighed.

"If I had someone to go home to, I wouldn't want to stay out," Arthur admitted. He smiled sadly. "I didn't know it would be this... I try my best." He tugged his old, soft, dark leather jacket on over his camel jumper. He looked tired.

"You'll find someone," Eames said easily. "You'll find someone and you'll be safe with them and it will be wonderful." Arthur rolled his eyes. "I know, I know. You don't need my pity, darling."

"Fuck off," Arthur laughed. "Listen... Keep half an ear out, yeah?" he asked. 

"Yeah," Eames agreed. Arthur clapped him on the shoulder and made his way out.

//

"Forgive me, first love, but I'm tired. I need to get away to feel again.  
Try to understand why.  
Don't get so close to change my mind... Simply, it's time."

//

Eames sometimes wished he were gay.

Only sometimes mind, and only in an absent sort of way. But he did wonder about it. He looked at Arthur and could see, objectively, that he was attractive. He was fit, with a really lovely jaw and with those dark, gentle eyes. He could imagine spending his life with a woman very much like Arthur: someone who made him laugh, was witty and sarcastic and annoyed him very rarely. He often found himself wondering absently why gender was enough to make people bar off relationships that could be very successful. His best relationships had been with girls and women he’d been friends with first, after all. He often wondered what it would like to be gay, in an absently curious way, why he didn’t just try and be with Arthur. He sometimes wished he could give it a go.

He wished he were gay in a way that only happened when he realised how awful Arthur felt whenever he saw Eames with a girl.

One of those times was at a wedding he had been invited to (read: forced to attend). He dimly disliked weddings and the ceremony of it all. He didn't mind the marriage part, the legal aspect; he would very much like to belong to someone like that one day. He thought he would belong to Madeline like that. He had thought she was his like that. He had been wrong, he thought, and pushed the thoughts of Madeline out of his head. Eames wandered off the dance floor, heading over to the bar.

"Jack and ginger," he said at the barkeep's questioning look. He surveyed the thinning crowd, dreamers and non-criminal people alike. He also didn't understand why Vivian was marrying someone who wasn't in the business. They'd never understand dreaming, if Viv could ever tell them the truth. He saw a familiar someone slouching, alone at one of the rounds tables, near the west corner of the hall. Eames scooped up his drink, sipping it absently as he moved around tables to Arthur. He looked lonely (probably due to sitting alone rather than any actual indication of loneliness, Eames hoped), slouched with his elbows on his knees, twisting a paper napkin between his nimble fingers.

"Didn't know you were invited, darling," he said brightly, placing his drink down. Arthur looked up at him and smiled politely. He did look lonely, Eames could see close up. He still looked tired. "I would have been bothering you all evening if I had."

"Hello, Mr Eames," Arthur said as Eames flopped into the chair next to him, the table at their backs, facing the dance floor. "No Madeline?"

"I just ended things with Madeline," he said shortly. "She left."

"Ah," said Arthur understandingly. He looked a bit tipsy, and Eames decided this was why he looked a bit sad, not out of any actual meaning. There was no reason to be overly concerned. "That is. I'm sorry. You liked her a lot. She was. Was happy for you?" Arthur was indeed tipsy, stumbling slightly over his words. He sat up and leaned back in his chair, avoiding Eames’s eyes to focus on his napkin paper art project.

"Yes," Eames agreed. "She made me happy, while it lasted. She got bored of me, I suppose," he bemoaned.

"Impossible," Arthur said easily. "What happened?" he asked. Eames shrugged. Both their suits were a bit rumpled from the long night and he hoped he didn't look lonely like Arthur. 

"We've been living together," he said heavily. "We committed to being together. We worked together instead of putting things on hold; she let go of her lease. Then three weeks ago, she left."

"Why?" Arthur asked with a frown. "I can't imagine you were anything but the amazing boyfriend I saw when she worked with us?"

"I just loved her more than she was ready for," Eames guessed. "She's gone."

"How are you?" Arthur asked astutely. His sloe eyes peeked up, catching Eames’s staring.

"I hate weddings," Eames said by way of response. Arthur didn't push. Eames liked him for that. "I hate especially coming to one alone. You must as well." Arthur shrugged, breaking Eames’s gaze to look down at his napkin. His suit was somehow impeccable even when wrinkled, dark earth tones and a soft shirt and tie combo in various burgundies.

"I can't get married in this country, so I don't have a real opinion," Arthur said, avoiding the question almost in retaliation. Eames allowed him to get away with it.

"Oh, America, land of the free," Eames put in. Arthur hummed his amusement.

"I've never been to one before either," he added. "But I guess it was fine?" Arthur pulled a face of scepticism. "Really long. I thought it was just, you know, the aisle and the vows, but there were all those readings and people talking, and now this party where I am to be, where I am having no one to talk to all night. Where I had no one to talk to all night," he corrected himself. Eames smiled at the rarest mistake Arthur could make: grammar. He noted the three empty glasses behind Arthur and resisted the urge to ply him with four more drinks just to see giggly, drunk Arthur replace quiet, thoughtful and tipsy Arthur. Arthur continued softly, almost sad and sincere, "Also I have no one to dance with, but there is free booze. Kind of balances out the evening."

"But you. Why no date?" Eames pressed, before realising of course. Arthur shot him a look.

"Lotta people I work with here," Arthur pointed out slowly. "I want to keep my job, thank you."

"Does anyone else know you're gay?" Eames asked. Arthur shushed him sharply, looking around to see how close people were. "Sorry." Arthur turned back to his napkin with a frown that looked too permanent. The napkin was turning into origami or something, Eames could see.

"I mean, if someone asked me directly, I don't think I'd lie," Arthur murmured. "I might. I don't know. I was out to my friends in high school, my foster families. I'm not ashamed of it or anything, but it's also not worth the hassle it would be at work." Arthur was watching him now, and their gazes locked and stayed.

"But no date to bring if you could?" Eames pushed. He hadn't seen Arthur much since he was discharged from the hospital, taking a bullet for Eames. He still looked a bit thin (he lost a lot of weight while recovering), but he seemed fine. It had been hard, after seeing Arthur safely on a plane to his home base, to go home to his girlfriend and wonder if he'd ever love her like that. He and Madeline had broken up because he'd tried to love her like Arthur loved him and she freaked out. He thought men were supposed to be the ones who couldn't commit, he thought bitterly. She had just picked up one day and left. She'd taken his best pyjamas (and his heart). He felt stupid for loving her and even stupider for not immediately stopping because she left. 

"I was seeing this German guy for a while," Arthur said quietly. "Clark. But I dunno. It didn't work out. He isn't—"

He isn't you.

Eames heard it loud and clear in the way Arthur looked away and broke off suddenly. Eames stared at him as he stared determinedly at his hands, twisting the napkin once more. Eames stared a long time, trying to see why, why Arthur was alone, why Arthur wanted him, why he mattered. He didn't understand it. Was this how Mads had felt, seeing Eames fall so hard and just not being on the same page? Was that why she had left without giving him an explanation? He thought about his friendship with Arthur. He wouldn't leave Arthur, if they had been together, he supposed. Arthur loved him; he could see it. Arthur would try so hard to make him happy. Arthur did. How could he discount that as not worth a proper goodbye?

Eventually Arthur cleared his throat. He offered Eames the napkin and Eames looked down at a tiny, delicate, paper rose. He smiled sadly.

"For you," Arthur said softly, motioning for Eames to take it. He did, grasping the stem and admiring the petals and the leaf. It looked like a much sadder version of King Midas had touched a real rose and turned it, not to gold, but thin napkin paper, delicate and transparent. It was genuinely lovely and it broke Eames's heart. Arthur wouldn't look at him.

"I'm sorry I'm not gay," Eames blurted. Arthur laughed bitterly. "I really am. I wish I could… Do anything to make this better for you."

"That's not your problem," Arthur said flatly. "It's my problem, and I just have to. To deal with it," he finished heavily. "Most days it's fine, but I don't know. Sometimes it's just hard to be alone." He seemed to have surprised himself with his honesty, so Eames didn't push; even tho every forging, con instinct screamed that now was the time to take advantage.

"Thank you for the flower," Eames said, feeling unbearably idiotic. Arthur smiled warmly.

"Anytime," Arthur promised. He stood and Eames let him leave.

He really was sorry. He watched Arthur wander off, into the ever-shrinking crowd, and wished he could change that fundamental part of himself and make this situation better. He wished he could love anyone as much as Arthur loved him. He wished he could make Arthur happy instead of holding a knife in his heart and twisting the handle by simply existing. He wished someone could make Arthur stop loving him. He wished Arthur would find someone who could love him like he deserved.

He wished he was gay. He wished he could have let Arthur kiss him on that night years ago. Because Eames couldn’t let him, they’d both gone their separate ways romantically. Arthur spent a lot of his time alone; Eames just lost someone special because he began to love her like Arthur loved him. Why couldn’t he be with Arthur? Look at him. He had been a great friend over the years, pulling Eames off of bad jobs and poking him towards good ones, laughing with him on good days and drinking with him on bad ones, smiling at his secret jokes and keeping his secrets. Years had gone by and Arthur still loved him. 

Why couldn’t Eames just love him back?

//

"I know, I know, I know. What else are we here for?  
The same as I love you, you'll always love me too. This love isn't good unless it's me and you."

//

No matter how much Arthur had hated it, the wedding had been better than the funeral. The funeral, at least, was much quicker. They had cremated Mal shortly after the police morgue released her body, so there wasn’t any big to-do about burial rites. They had put her in various boxes for various people to put in various places. Her husband was meant to leave some of her in their back garden, some in the Maldives, where they'd had their honeymoon. Her parents took some to Paris, and Lille and Bordeaux. A few went to her university friends from New York, a few to some illegal dreamers, and nothing to Arthur. The funeral hadn't taken that long. There was nothing to bury. It was a short service more for the family than for the dead.

"What are you doing here?" Cobb asked him tiredly when Arthur went to give his condolences. He looked awful. He looked like Frankenstein’s creation warmed over, and little sweet Phillipa was asleep in his arms, drooling on the shoulder of his suit. Her face was red and blotchy with tears. James was with Miles, off in the back of the church's reception building. "She wouldn't have wanted you to have come." 

"She was a good friend," Arthur said quietly. "Maybe I'm here just to tell you how sad I was to hear what had happened. To say I’m sorry." Mal had jumped. Lost after time in Limbo. Insane from withdrawal; she didn't think she needed the PASIV if she were already dreaming. The tremors and psychosis from lack of somnacin couldn't have helped her after so long in Limbo. Cobb looked like an old man.

"You and Mal haven't spoken in months," Cobb pointed out. He shifted his grip on Phillipa. Most people had gone now, filtered out. Mal's closest friends lingered with James and her parents. Arthur resisted the urge to tuck a loose lock of hair behind Phillipa's ear, out of her eyes. He wasn’t allowed to anymore. "She figured out you were gay—" Arthur winced and looked a cursory glance. No dreamers were still here, it seemed. "—and she wouldn't have wanted you here." Arthur knew Cobb wasn't trying to rip his heart into pieces, and he should know. It had been the last job he'd ever worked with Mal. They had been friends. He adored her, and she adored him. When she pieced his sexuality together, she lost it, threw him off the job and railed that she had let him near her children. She was just as closed as the rest of dreamshare it seemed. 

He only blamed himself. If he had been better at pretending, she would have never found out he was gay. He would have been there on the job when they dropped into Limbo. He would have known. He would have stopped it, or he would have known she was going insane. He would have stopped it. Phillipa would still have her bright, vivacious mother. 

"I know that—"

"She wouldn't have wanted you around the kids," Cobb said. "I'm sorry. You know I—I don't know if it’s true. I don't care. Your contacts at the CIA were the only thing keeping them from arresting me on sight when they found the letter. So I don't care, but today of all days, I have to—She would ask you to leave."

Arthur didn't say anything after that. Cobb turned to one of Mal's hundred, Catholic, French cousins. She tried in her broken English to take Phillipa, and he tried in his broken French to reply he wanted to get her and James home, into bed, before people showed up at the house for the second reception. He, fluent in both languages but gay and therefore useless, turned and left.

He ended up at a shitty bar in downtown LA, on a side street that was practically an alley. The floor was sticky. There was an old man asleep in a booth in the back, a game of Solitaire spread on the table like a mockery of a pillow. But the bartender left the bottle, and things were quiet. He felt fake. He felt numb. 

"You didn't go to the reception at the house," a familiar voice remarked from behind him. Arthur couldn't even summon the energy to be surprised. He watched Eames lean over the bar and pick up an empty glass. He helped himself to Arthur's bottle. 

“You weren't at the funeral,” Arthur replied. 

"No," he agreed simply. “I threw up in the taxi. I just couldn't.” Eames sat next to Arthur, looking terrible, pale and drawn. He was in funeral drab, a black suit and tie with a dark, dark, charcoal shirt. He usually wore bright patterns and played with modern looks. Seeing him so demure almost hurt Arthur's eyes. Arthur had nothing to say to comfort Eames, so he sat with him in silence.

"She was my cousin, you know," Eames said. The soft light of the dark bar made him look much older than he was. Arthur didn't reply. "Her parents divorced when she was seven—Marie and Pierre—and her mother married my Uncle Miles. We grew up together. Same school, same street; we were best friends. I hadn't seen her in ages, but. Not since Phil turned four, I think. I didn't even know... Why wouldn't she have told me?"

"You weren't real to her, in the end," Arthur pointed out. "Why would she have called her projection of her cousin to tell him she was dreaming and needed to wake up?" Eames frowned, staring down into his drink. Arthur poured him more.

“I feel like I should have known,” Eames said. His voice was froggy. Arthur swallowed around a lump in his throat and tried not to cry. Men didn't, after all. 

Arthur let Eames finish the bottle. After all, like Cobb said, Mal had cut ties with him months ago. He should have finished his grieving by now. He hadn't and instead he just felt numb.

Dragging Eames drunk into a taxi was a familiar enough task but something was off. He leant too heavily into Arthur, his arm around Arthur's waist. Arthur promised the driver they wouldn't throw up in the car—apparently, they looked as bad as Arthur felt.

"She's dead," Eames said. His voice was flat as his head settled on Arthur's shoulder.

"I know, Eames; I know," he said. He took Eames's hand, hesitant but needing something, something, something. Eames gripped back. Holding himself together was easier with Eames at his side. Arthur hauled Eames, drunk and a little weepy, back to Eames’s hotel room. Eames leant against the wall, watching Arthur thru heavy, hooded lids.

"Do you have a key?" Arthur asked. He wavered slightly, standing. He had had more to drink than he'd thought, but not as much as he had originally wanted to. He had wanted to drink until he forgot, until the numbness faded and changed into nausea or sickness or something. Eames didn't answer him, staring dimly at the floor. He passed a key over and Arthur pushed the door open. 

He reached out to give Eames his key back but Eames just wandered into the hotel room. Arthur followed him into the room, letting the door slide shut and leaning against the wall. Eames leant against the closet door across the narrow entryway. They looked at each other. Arthur couldn't shake the empty feeling he had, the hollow feeling in his chest. 

"Do you feel anything?" Eames blinked up at him. "I mean," Arthur fumbled, looking away from Eames's gaze. "I should… I should be sad or something. I'm just—"

"Empty?" Eames offered. Arthur nodded. "I'm not. Empty." Arthur frowned at the halting speech. "I'm angry. I'm so fucking furious that she's gone and there was nothing I could do." Eames seemed to just break then. He snapped a hand to his face, covering his eyes and letting out a sound like a wounded animal. Arthur reached a hand across the narrow hallway, and Eames grabbed it.

"Fuck," Arthur said. It hit him then, everything they had lost with Mal's death, the friendship he'd lost months ago, and everything he could never have with the man less than three feet from him, the things he might never have because amazing, talented, important members of their community, like Mal, hated people like him. Because people like him weren't to be trusted with children who adored them. They weren't safe to be around. People like him would taint the subconscious of normal people. People like him were useless and stupid and fuck, why didn't he hide it better? He would have known if he’d hidden it and stayed her business partner; he could have saved her. The numbness went away, tearing his ribcage apart and stopping his breath. "Fuck," he said again. 

"It'll be OK," Eames begged. "Won't it?" 

"Yes," Arthur promised. He was crying. "Yes, it has to be." He pulled Eames to the bed. He wavered, drunk and emotional and with Eames squeezing his hand tight. He pushed Eames down and made him lie down. "It'll be OK," he said. "It'll be OK." Eames wouldn't let go. Arthur sat on the bed, facing away from his friend. 

"When I met her, she said I'd be the best in the world someday," Arthur said. "I was new, just realising the game and how dangerous it was." Eames was still sobbing, clutching Arthur's hand, one hand circling his wrist with the other nearly creaking his fingers with pressure. Arthur clung to Eames like he was a buoy out at sea. "I was scared and I knew it was too late to get out. I had to jump in with both feet and I didn't know how to swim." His face was wet.

"And then you met Mal," Eames put in. "Like a breath of fresh air." They sat in silence then, quiet. Eventually, Eames's grip slackened. Arthur looked, and Eames was asleep. 

He pulled Eames’s shoes off and pushed a pillow under his head. Being alone sounded too scary; he fell asleep on the room’s other bed. When he woke up, he was alone, and he told himself that was fine.

//

"When you lose something you can't replace. When you love someone, but it goes to waste.  
Could it be worse? ... When you're too in love to let it go?  
If you never try, then you'll never know just what you're worth. Lights will guide you home."

//

"How long have you two been together?"

Eames glanced up from his half-completed law-degree to peer at the tiny architect. Ariadne was casually holding a blueprint out to him as tho he could possibly assist her with it. She blinked at him, waiting for an answer.

"Together?" he echoed. She nodded briskly. He wondered, absently, if she was this nosy in and of herself, or if it was an American trait. Cobb certainly had no qualms about asking him personal questions, or at least, he didn't before Limbo and he became the strange little man he currently was. Pre-Limbo Cobb had had a clever, vibrant and nosy mind that Eames had to grudgingly respect for its brilliance. Now, he reminded Eames of his grandfather, before he died: a quietness that came with living too long a life thru too many wars and a delicate sadness that came with being a widow, along with his own big box of crazy that came exclusively from insane experimentation with dreams and losing his wife, the amazing, vibrant Mal, in a long, drawn out process.

"Together," she repeated. "Dating, involved, sleeping with each other, whatever words you criminals use to describe your weird little relationships." He frowned. She raised an eyebrow in reply. He leaned properly back, moving his brush far from his work just in time for it to drip navy ink onto a spare sheet of blotting paper.

"I am not currently seeing anyone," he replied. Her openly curious face curved into her own frown. It was, despite her adorable and curious scowl, very annoying to see her insane, inner wheels whirl.

"But," she began, protesting. "You and Arthur—"

"I'm not gay," Eames replied shortly. "I'm very much a heterosexual man, no matter what my fantastic, handmade Italian loafers may have told you." She ignored his charm and impish wink.

"But Arthur," she began again. Both of their eyes drifted over to where Arthur was working, calibrating the PASIV device for experimental dosages. Yusuf wanted to begin testing his new compound in the morning; the chemical safeties would have to be turned off for tests, and reset for the new limits afterwards. He was unaware of their scrutiny, and, being as observant as he was, would be for another nine seconds.

He looked away before Arthur noticed him watching. He counted Arthur as one of his best friends, despite or perhaps because of how Arthur felt about him. He had done his best, after realising how Arthur felt, not to lead him on in any way. As the years had gone by, he could tell Arthur still harboured feelings (growing feelings) for him. It seemed they were still obvious, or at least apparent, if Ariadne had noticed after only two weeks.

"Wow," she murmured, pulling her blueprint back to herself. "I can't imagine having someone feel that way about me."

"How do you mean?" Eames asked coolly. "He has a bit of a professional crush. My work is to be admired," Eames lied, for Arthur's sake. "He'll get over it." Ariadne gave him a strange look. Eames glanced over at Arthur just in time to catch Arthur watching them curiously, wondering, no doubt, why Ariadne had been staring at him with wild abandon. Arthur gave him a playful glare that would appear edged to anyone else and Eames smiled gently. Arthur went back to his work, and tho Eames couldn't hear it at this distance, the light movement of his head meant he was humming to himself. Probably humming show tunes from Wicked again, that ponce.

"I'm pretty sure he's in love with you," Ariadne said sharply. Eames gave her an equally sharp look.

"I'm pretty sure this is not up for discussion," he replied pointedly. She raised an arid brow. "Don't, Ariadne. Saying things like that could cost him so much in this business. It could cost him his life."

"He should be less obvious—" she began, undeterred, but Eames cut her off unkindly.

"Leave it. Get back to work," he ordered. She pouted and he snapped, "Do as you're told." He pulled his senior officer voice out and she trotted off obediently.

Eames spared Arthur another glance. He hated the idea. He couldn't imagine ever loving Arthur back in that way. He wasn't gay, and he hated the idea that Arthur, who hadn't had a long-term relationship in the time Eames had known him, was in love (actual honest-to-god love) with someone he couldn't have.

It would have been an absolute waste of such an amazing, marvellous man, to have Arthur sit and pine after him. Eames hated waste.

//

"He could change the world with his hands behind his back.  
You can find him sitting on your doorstep, waiting for the surprise...  
He will feel like he's been there for hours, and  
you can tell that he'll be there for life."

//

The cabin would be unremarkable if it wasn't for the location. Nearly three hours from anything, in the middle of the everglades. It had happy yellow siding, running water and its own generator, and therefore a porch light that had eerie spider webs hanging and swaying in the slightest breeze. Like Eames said, it would be unremarkable anywhere else. In the middle of nowhere, it looked like Paradise. He had been hesitant to agree to a job this far from anywhere, but Jedrek was the best. His jobs were always amazing and he'd stressed this one's importance. Apparently, he was the only forger who could get this done. He had, as Jedrek put it, the unique ability to lure in marks like this particular one. He couldn't wait to find out.

Besides, this place didn't look too bad. There was even a barbeque. Eames hopped out of the little boat he'd stolen, onto a rickety dock. He tied the boat to one of the railings, inspecting his apparent workspace. Not a lot of windows. Probably not a lot of light. It would be hard to make IDs here, and he didn't know what sort of thing this con would require. He lifted his work bag out of the boat.

"Hello?" he called, wandering up the short pier and climbing up the steps of the sturdy porch. "Is anyone there?"

"Eames!" a familiar voice called. Eames hurried down the steps, rounding the porch and looking up at a gravel driveway. Jedrek, a Polish guy with English nearly as good as Arthur's, trotted towards him. He beamed at Eames. He had a week-old black eye and a brand new split lip to match his pale skin and mousy brown hair.

This job could not get more surreal.

"It's great to see you," Jedrek promised. Eames shook his hand professionally. "Thanks for making it on such short notice."

"You always have interesting work," Eames said simply, "and the paycheque you mentioned didn't hurt."

"Of course," Jedrek chuckled. "Let me show you around." Eames followed him back to the porch, noting the combination padlock chaining the thick, metal door shut. He glanced over at the sole front window; bars on the inside and exterior. He frowned. A con usually didn't require this type of security. "Now, I'm paying you out of my own pocket, you understand. I can't get you your money until the job is completed."

"Sure thing," he agreed slowly. Jedrek swung the door open, and Eames trailed behind him after the lights hummed to life.

The cabin was one large room. There were a few work tables, cheap fold out ones, and a kitchenette. It would be unremarkable like the rest of the cabin, if not for an entire corner sectioned off into the type of large fence cage some people kept pit bulls locked in in yards. The door was currently open, giving Eames a clear view of a thin cot and a railing with handcuffs attached to it, one dangling open, as tho waiting for a hand to be locked inside. The cement ground had a drain in one corner of the ceiling-to-floor cage.

"What kind of job is this, exactly?" Eames asked. Jedrek tossed the padlock onto a table littered with random power tools.

"It had become to my attention there is someone in dreamshare who doesn't belong," Jedrek said coolly. He crossed to the mini-fridge and yanked out a green bottle of beer. "Want one?"

"No, thanks. Like a fed, a mole, you mean?" Eames pressed, raising a brow. He tossed his bag to the floor under the nearest table. He ran his fingers over the neatly laid out circular saw blades, four different sizes. This didn't feel like the bizarre, exciting cons Jedrek was known for.

"Something like that," Jedrek said cryptically. Eames was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

"So what does that have to do with me?" he wondered pointedly. Jedrek took a swig of beer.

"You've worked with him a few times," Jedrek explained. "More than most of us have. You have a lot to be invested in this. I needed help with fixing this issue, and I needed someone I can trust. I asked around and clearly you're my guy."

"Highly recommended, eh?" Eames repeated. "The paycheque better be worth it." Jedrek laughed outright.

"Taking this sucker out of the game will be priceless, don't worry." He placed his beer bottle on top the fridge. "He's been out there long enough in this heat. Should we get started?"

"You've already found him?" Eames guessed, surprised. He trailed after Jedrek, following him back out and towards the car. He was usually the finder in these situations. He'd knocked out two rats before; he was quite good at ratting them out without giving his own criminal nature away. It was tricky business. If you did it wrong, you'd go down with the rat. It was next to impossible to survive an encounter with police if you were a dreamer, not one of the people who organised and hired out jobs. Track marks were vivid and somnacin was illegal enough to put you away the same way law could if they could prove mind invasion had occurred.

"Of course," Jedrek said dryly, shoving his sleeves up. "We have to take him out, don't we?" Eames stumbled to a dead stop. The cage. Seclusion. Power tools.

"What do you want us to do here?" he demanded sharply. Jedrek sighed, turning to him and muttering Polish lightly under his breath.

"I told you," he said unhelpfully. Eames scoffed.

"I don't know what you've heard," he snapped, "but I'm not a killer. If you've caught on to a mole or an Interpol agent, or whatever, blow their cover and let them take the fall! It's safer and more fun overall—"

Jedrek interrupted. "When you see what I have, you'll want to kill it." He sounded certain, like a killer, all murderous rage contained under a gentle calm, a razor hidden under a tulip petal.

Eames looked back at his stolen little boat, debating taking off right then and there. He had no interest in taking part in the murder of an informer. Something in his unease made him stay, made him sigh heavily. He scrubbed his hands over his face and joined an impatient Jedrek at the boot of a white Acura EL.

Jedrek banged his fist on the boot tauntingly. Someone kicked the inside of the lid in response, yelling indistinctly thru the metal.

"It will be worth it," Jedrek promised. He pulled out a set of car keys—fucking weirdo—and pressed the fob. The lid popped open, not enough to see who was inside. More threats streamed out, angry and loud and—

Jedrek lifted the boot all the way up, and Eames's heart stopped.

Inside the trunk, wrists and legs taped together, was Arthur. He was bruised and beaten to shit; a head wound bleeding sluggishly and his clothes torn randomly. His eyes swivelled from a grinning Jedrek to a shocked Eames. He honestly did a double-take. His steady stream of what Eames could only imagine as Polish threats immediately halted. 

"Eames?" he said softly with such betrayal and disbelief. "What the fuck are you—?"

Eames slammed the trunk down, horrified.

"Worth it, eh?" Jedrek bragged. Eames gawked at him. Arthur began screaming inside the boot again, vague, furious shouts.

"What the fuck is Arthur doing in the boot of your fucking car?" he demanded. Jedrek chuckled with no mirth. The trunk fell quiet, only desperate, angry kicking. "Fuck," Eames realised. His world tilted and he grabbed at his totem. Sick, cold reality. "Arthur is the person you want to get rid of?" Jedrek nodded. "He was compromised... He sold people out?" Eames guessed. It seemed the only explanation. The only possible, impossible explanation. Arthur was an honourable man. He played as fair as he could in dreamshare. Arthur loved him; was that a lie to get information? He thought of all the people who had gone down in the last few years. Fuck. Had Arthur—"Sold me out?"

"No," Jedrek said, sounding disgusted. "When did I say I caught a cop?" He slammed a fist on the silent lid and the indistinct yelling began again. Jedrek laughed with real joy. Eames stared at the tell-tale blood spray of a bludgeoning on Jedrek's thin, scarred forearms. Arthur's blood.

"Arthur's the best," Eames said dimly. He didn't understand. If Arthur wasn't a cop, what the fuck was going on? "Too good for dreamshare to lose. What did he...?"

"I always suspected," Jedrek confessed, leaning conspiratorially close. Eames held the gaze of his crazy eyes easily, not betraying the leftover nausea he had at the thought that Arthur might have sold him out. "I work with him once years ago. I always thought he was."

"Thought he was what?" Eames questioned, lowering his gaze to the blood spatter from Jedrek's face. "If he's not an informer, he's too valuable to take out on a grudge—"

"Arthur's a fucking faggot."

"What?" he echoed. He stared at Jedrek, shocked beyond words almost. Jedrek wanted Arthur removed because someone outed him? Jedrek looked like a fox with that grin, all teeth and crazy eyes. He nodded happily.

"I always thought," Jedrek bragged. "But now I know. This fucking faggot's been in our heads, Eames!" Jedrek poked his finger at his own forehead; he looked demented. "He's been in here!"

"And so you think he should die?" Eames pressed flatly, hoping he had hidden his genuine shock. Jedrek shrugged, feigning apology.

"I don't care what he does if he's in his own fucking thing, man," Jedrek said. Eames could tell he was lying thru his teeth. Jedrek smiled sadly down at the boot, his eyes alight with play. "But he brought this shit into our zone. Into our heads," he spat. "This pervert's been watching us sleep! Running background checks and fucking being in our dreams!" Eames stared. Jedrek spat, furious and disgusted. "He crossed a line."

"Lines have been crossed," Eames agreed vaguely. He frowned at the car. Fuck. He really didn't know what to do. Jedrek could tell anybody. What would someone else try when Jedrek let the news spread? Who said he hadn't already spread it? How did he get Arthur, and himself, out of this mess?

"Does anyone else know about him?" he asked, jerking his head at the car. Jedrek shook his head.

"I'm the only one, except for the fucker who told me," he promised. Eames nodded. Arthur's voice chimed helpfully in his head: rule number one is don't get caught, but rule number two is don't let someone get away with catching you.

Eames didn't know what to do.

//

"From hundreds of miles, you cry like a baby.  
You plead with me, shout, scream, 'Tell me I'm staying!'  
I know, I know, I know. I'm still your love.  
Back from the last place that I wanted to fake,  
You laugh with me, shout, scream, now, tell me I'm staying.  
I know, I know, I know. You're still my love."

//

Eames, Arthur thought, breathing thru the pain. The physical pain, he promised himself. Nothing more. Eames was nothing more than a liability, someone who had cost him too much. People you kissed once on a fake date and then became sort-of-best-friends with shouldn't be able to exist. There were rules; awkward breakups destroy, not make friendships. Friends didn't sell each other out. Eames was not a friend. He couldn't be. He outed Arthur to Jedrek—no one else knew!—and now Arthur was in a trunk slowly bleeding and waiting for his promised torture.

Jedrek had told him someone outed him, told him he was going to die, told him someone had tried to trade their life for his. At least Eames wasn't giving him to Jedrek for no reason. At least he would survive this. Arthur hated himself for being relieved at that.

The lid of the trunk thunked again and Arthur kicked tiredly in reply.

Light streamed into the pitch black space. Arthur lifted his duct taped wrists despite how much his shoulder hurt, protecting his eyes from the sudden burning light. Someone moved to their right, casting their shadow kindly over his face. He squinted up at them.

"You look like shite," Eames said flatly. "Come on; let's get you out of the boot." He cupped underneath Arthur's head with one hand, taking his elbow with the other and helping him swing his taped legs over the lip of the trunk. "Mind your head; there you go." Arthur would have liked to pretend he didn't need the help but he was busy pretending he wasn't about to throw up from the movement. The air must have been hot (Eames was sweating lightly) but it felt cool after hours upon hours inside a stuffy trunk.

"I'm sorry about this," Eames said, the asshole. Arthur spat bloody saliva into the dirt next to Eames's feet and Eames ignored his glare. Eames knelt, pulling loose the tape around his ankles. Arthur knew, even if Eames was kind enough to not force him to hop pathetically to wherever they planned to kill him, he wasn't going to be stupid enough to untie Arthur's hands. This was his only chance.

As soon as his feet were free, he swung his hands down hard, cleanly catching Eames across his cheekbone. Kneeling awkwardly, he lost his balance with a grunt and flung out a hand to catch himself. Arthur hauled himself to his feet, knowing he wouldn't get another chance to get away. He tried to run, unsure of where he was or where he could go; the air was thick with the smell of swamp. His legs were like jelly, and he stumbled.

"Whoa, whoa," Eames said gently, appearing at Arthur's side and catching him. "Shush, Arthur, I've got you." Arthur swung an elbow into Eames's face. Eames dropped him with a shout. Arthur gasped as he landed hard on the packed dirt. It felt like cement on his bruises, jarring the broken, burst skin from the bludgeoning and the bullet still in his back.

Eames was bleeding, his hand dripping blood where he clutched at his face. Arthur would have laughed if he wasn't busy enjoying his last moments of life. Eames sold you out, his mind rattled, still racing and throbbing with concussion. That accusation looped like a broken record, repeating and repeating over white noise. He tried to push himself up but his shoulder wouldn't have it. His left arm shook furiously and he collapsed.

"Fuck! Arthur!" Eames yelled. "Knock it off!"

"Fuck you," Arthur spat. He kicked Eames's knee when he moved to grab Arthur again.

"Ow! Stop it!" Eames demanded, clutching his knee.

"Just kill me," Arthur ordered, pushing himself to his feet. He ignored the tearing sensation in his shoulder. "Don't let Jedrek put his fucking hands on me again; I'll rip them off." He meant it. If that homophobic dickweed touched him again, said one more thing about how perverted or disgusting he was, Arthur was going to lose his last vestiges of sanity. He was going to lose it and try to hurt the bastard before they put a bullet in his head.

"Arthur, will you listen to me?" Eames shouted. He took a step closer and Arthur socked him again. "Fuck!" He pulled a gun from the small of his back. He pointed it firmly at Arthur. Arthur spread his fingers best he could, holding his hands up in surrender. Eames wiped his streaming nose on his sleeve. "Arthur. Calm down."

Arthur laughed without humour. He couldn't help it. His heart was breaking and he had really thought Eames was trustworthy. Eames was his friend; Eames had known him for years. He'd saved Eames from so many jobs gone wrong, pulled him out of a double cross once, before it was too late. They fucking incepted someone together. Didn't that mean something? Arthur stumbled a bit with laughter and dizziness but didn't fall. His back was burning at him, the bullet still pressed against the bottom of his shoulder blade. Everything hurt and he told himself there wasn't an ache in his heart that was purely emotional.

"Why now?" he asked. He needed to know and he was very close to being hysterical. He needed to know why Eames would do this to him. Why would Eames out him like this? Why now? What made it worth it after five—nearly six—years?

"Why what?" Eames asked, holding the gun on Arthur. "Are you calm? Or are you going to hit me again?"

"You fucking outed me," Arthur nearly sobbed, shamefully. "Handed me to Jedrek and now—" Everything hurt, his vision was swimming with the pain in his head and he just wanted to give up and die. "He wants to fucking kill me, so just kill me—" Eames was supposed to have been his friend. He trusted Eames. He cried with Eames in a dive hotel after Mal's funeral. He trusted Eames to make his aliases for him. He had given, stupidly and blinded with love, Eames everything he needed to sell him out.

"No, no, I didn't!" Eames said desperately. "How could you think—I had no idea Jedrek had you when I came here."

"No one else knows I'm gay!" Arthur screamed. Eames lowered the gun and ran his other hand thru his hair, mindless of the blood that had sheeted it from swiping at his bleeding nose. The pained look that Eames wore, so genuine and sorry and something Arthur had seen a dozen times before, made Arthur sink to the ground, his head throbbing as it practically bounced on the hard ground. He couldn't stand anymore. He was exhausted, bone tired and he didn't even have his rage to keep him going. It hadn't been Eames. He really hadn't known Jedrek wanted Arthur dead when he came here. Thank some god or some thing that it had been Eames and not someone else.

Eames was immediately at his side. He dropped the gun and hoisted Arthur up off the cement-like ground, holding him strangely close as they knelt together in the muggy heat of the marshy swamp. Arthur clutched at the arm around his chest, feeling Eames's solid presence. He was there, he hadn't given Arthur up and he hadn't killed him. Fuck, he might not die today. How amazing. Eames began cutting away the tape at his wrists. 

"I would never have outed you," Eames promised fervently. "I didn't, I swear. I didn't know this is what Jedrek wanted me for. I had no idea, not until I saw you in the boot."

"Where is Jedrek?" Arthur asked, trying to stand. Eames pulled him up, keeping a careful hand on his elbow, keeping him steady. The world swam and Arthur closed his eyes and breathed deep. The air was muggy and his mouth was filled with cotton, it felt like. Eames shrugged.

"I don't know what to do with him," he admitted. "He's in the… There's a cage in there," he explained, gesturing vaguely at the cabin. "I didn't know what to do with him."

"Who outed me?" Arthur demanded. "Who could pull this shit again?" 

"Some guy named Jack," Eames said. "Apparently he knew and tried to trade you for an out when he was caught as part of a team extracting from Jedrek."

"Jack Ascanius?" he clarified. "The chemist?" 

"One and the same," Eames promised. "How did he know?"

"Ex-boyfriend," he admitted. "I never thought… I didn't think he'd ever." Arthur thought of the hatred Jedrek had spewed into his ears over the past few days. "He’s killed Jack, hasn’t he?" Eames nodded sadly. 

"He got Jack to come out here for the same fake job I came out for, and then did it," Eames murmured apologetically. "I'm so sorry, Arthur." 

"It's fine," he lied, pretending it didn't fucking hurt that Jack had, after everything and all the fights about how trustworthy Arthur was, given him over for a phoney out. The least he could have done is actually survived. They may not have had a good breakup but it hurt to know Jack was dead. "Right. Your gun," he ordered. Eames picked it up obediently. "Is there water in there?"

"Yeah, a little kitchenette," Eames promised.

"Good. Fuck, I'm dying over here," he said, forcing a laugh and limping to the cabin. Eames followed him like a hawk or a newly minted mother: ready to catch him if he fell.

"Don't joke," Eames muttered.

"I’m not," Arthur said. He stared at the four steps dejectedly, and Eames helped him up them with a hand under his arm. He didn't acknowledge the moment Arthur needed to gather himself, head swirling and vision swimming, at the top. Arthur had always appreciated Eames's sense of discretion. He held out his hand and Eames stared at it. "Your gun," he requested. "Rule—"

"Two," Eames supplied, handing him the P238. "Don't let someone get away with catching you." Arthur smiled tiredly, feeling the catch of a split lip. He hefted the small pistol, testing its weight. He preferred a Glock 17, which was heavier, required less pull on the trigger and held nineteen rounds. This held six, but felt lighter than that. Probably not fully loaded, his mind supplied.

"Twelve," he added amiably. "Clean up your messes."

//

"With eyes that makes you melt, he lends his coat for shelter,  
plus he's there for you when he shouldn't be.  
But he stays all the same, waits for you then sees you thru."

//

Jedrek was dead. 

He had killed Jack, had tried to kill Arthur, and was convinced Eames was also a faggot from the way he defended Arthur. He would have either tried to take them both out to clear dreamshare of perverts, as he put it, or he would have simply outed them publicly and let that do the job. Arthur had a set of rules he lived by and killing Jedrek was justified by nearly every single one. Killing him put the body count at two, but letting him live would have, at a minimum, put the count at three (It also didn't hurt his conscience to know killing Jedrek meant protecting Eames).

Eames had a safe house he brought Arthur to, calling a friend with a medical degree and a habit of looking the other way when paid in cash by somnacin junkies. He'd held Arthur's hand thru the first slapdash surgery, as some guy drained the blood from his chest cavity that was apparently why Arthur felt someone was trying to squeeze his heart out of his chest. It was nice, bizarrely and pathetically, to know that sensation had surprisingly little to do with Eames's decision to save him, and more to do with someone trying to bludgeon him to death. It was strange to see how close Jedrek had come to succeeding. His heart was bruised and the doctor couldn't actually open Arthur up to check if his heart was still leaking blood. Short of risking a hospital (as a criminal and a somnacin junkie), Arthur had to wait it out and hope for the best. The surgery basically amounted to being stabbed in the chest with a needle and a tube and letting dark arterial blood spurt out into a bag. 

Eames held Arthur's hand, even tho Arthur was sure he was squeezing so tight the integrity of Eames's bones must have been compromised. He rubbed Arthur's forehead and murmured comforts, and because Arthur was secretly a stupid, lovesick girl, he let him. 

"This is going to hurt," the doctor warned him superfluously. Arthur nodded against the oxygen mask he was wearing. The doctor shifted him onto his stomach, tucking a pillow there to keep him at a forty five degree angle on his right side. 

"Wait," Eames ordered. "What are you doing now?" His friend wiped a pair of long Kelly clamps with a "sterilising cloth" Arthur couldn't imagine was one hundred percent effective. 

"That bullet has to come out," the doctor pointed out. "Pass me the vodka."

"Motherfucker," Arthur murmured mostly to himself, but Eames chuckled and pressed a hand to Arthur's sweaty hair. Arthur was heavy with pain and exhaustion and he nearly vomited into the oxygen mask when the doctor poured liberal amounts of vodka into his shoulder. He started mumbling thru the pain, anything to remind himself he was alive and not burning in a hell he didn't really believe in, and he was pretty sure his words were a jumble of his easy Polish and his thick Quebec French. 

"I know, darling, I know," Eames murmured, like he understood. The hand pressed to Arthur's damp curls stroked, barely noticeable past the ripping flames of agony in his shoulder. The Kelly clamps dug in as the doctor tried to avoid ripping his artery out with the bullet. "I've got you, dearest Arthur. I'm right here."

 

//

"Last night I was writing about you. I know my screaming and shouting won’t keep you.  
I know, I know, I know. You’re still my love. I wake up to the sound of you working.  
You’re one room right over, stressing and loving me. I know, I know, I know.  
Be still, my love."

//

It all changed when Arthur limped out of the spare room Eames had made cushy for him. He was healing nicely, all things considered, but burned feet were burned feet and Jedrek had been very liberal with the iron. Eames was snoring lightly on the couch, head tilted back against leather and his mouth open slightly. It was so fucking endearing Arthur nearly couldn't stand it; it turned bitter and full of longing in his throat. 

Badminton was playing on the TV and Arthur had no idea badminton was a proper sport that was televised. He limped over to the couches and considered his options. 

Eames was sprawled with his feet on the table, in the middle of the big couch, the one in which Arthur usually tucked himself into the corner of. There was a smaller two-seater but it was at an angle to the TV and was also not Arthur's usual, claimed spot. Eames's arm was flung over the back of the couch and for Arthur to sit in his spot he'd have to sit under Eames's arm. 

He decided, after a moment of deliberation, that it wasn't weird to sit right next to someone on a couch. Besides, until Arthur's survey of the rumour mill proved them out of the woods with Jedrek and any possible rumours, they were living together, keeping Arthur from the line of fire and keeping Eames from having to save his ass again. The safe house was just a flat Eames owned in Naples, Florida for some unknown reason. It was compact and cosy with big windows, neutral walls and no kitchen table. The couch was soft and the leather cool. Eames woke with a snuffle.

"Sorry," Arthur said stupidly. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"It's fine," Eames assured him warmly. His arm draped across the back of Arthur's shoulders as he shifted. "Who's winning?" They fell into amiable silence, easy as it always had been with them. Even when Arthur had one arm still in a sling from a bullet-broken shoulder, his other hand in a brace for a fractured thumb, even when Eames had a (only slightly, Arthur maintained guiltily) broken nose from Arthur's own fists. 

The game had ended and Arthur was watching an Arby's commercial when Eames's arms wrapped around him. Arthur froze, unsure of how to accept the warmth of Eames's strong, sturdy arm. Eames pulled Arthur's back to his chest, cautious of his sling and his bruises. His arms settled around Arthur's chest and his face buried in Arthur's neck. 

"What are you—?" Arthur began, tense. No one other than his old boyfriends had ever held him this close, this tenderly. Eames was a fairly touchy-feely guy but this seemed oddly intimate, even for him. 

"Just," Eames said, sounding pained. "Just let me." Eames just held him tighter, ever so slightly tighter. It didn't quite hurt his bruises. Eames held Arthur close and Arthur couldn't help but close his eyes and breathe that warm, burnt scent of Eames. He let himself imagine this wasn't just a delayed I'm-glad-you're-not-dead reaction. He relaxed into Eames's hold and they sat there a long time, close, with Eames's heartbeat at his back. He nearly dozed off, warm and safe within a set of strong arms. 

It was much later when Arthur felt lips at his neck. Unthinkingly, he tilted his head back onto a shoulder; those lips nipped at the sensitive skin under his jaw. He let out a little sigh under the gentle ministrations. Eames shifted behind him and Arthur's eyes flew open. What the fuck was happening? Had he fallen asleep?

Eames was straight. Eames was his friend and Eames was the person Arthur had been carrying a torch for what seemed like two or three lifetimes. Eames was straight; it was the source and cause of Arthur's angst for so long. This couldn't be real, but the ache of bruises hadn't gone away and Arthur knew every detail of how he arrived. 

"Eames, what—?" he began again. He turned in Eames's hold, frowning and confused. Eames cupped Arthur's jaw, his hand warm and dry and strong. 

"Just let me," he repeated. The almost-desperate tone had not faded. He kissed at Arthur's cheek, then down his neck again. His other arm snaked around Arthur's back now that they were facing each other. Confused, Arthur lifted his own hand, brace and all, resting it on the back of Eames's head. His hair was soft. "Fuck," Eames said brokenly, "Why is it always you?"

"What do you mean?" Arthur whispered. It felt like breaking the half-silence of the night would break everything, break this moment and rent Arthur's heart forever. Eames's hair was so soft. 

"You," Eames murmured, lips against Arthur's pulse point. "You. You. I need information, a mark, a job, anything; you find it. I get in trouble someplace; you get me out. I get shot at; you get in the way. You nearly died then. You nearly died now."

"Eames," Arthur half-protested, pointlessly. Eames kissed like he meant it, and Arthur had never been so confused. Eames was straight, that he knew. Eames was not his, that he knew too. So why was he nipping and kissing and biting at Arthur's neck, and, fuck, why did he know all the best spots to linger? Arthur whimpered despite himself. 

"It's always you," Eames said again. His breath was hot on Arthur's skin.

"Eames," Arthur breathed. He sounded so wrecked and vulnerable, even to his own ears. He touched Eames’s face with his braced hand, pulling it away from his neck, overwhelmed. Arthur pressed their foreheads together, keeping his eyes closed. Eames's own steely grey eyes were likely too close to focus on, but Arthur couldn't bear to look. 

"You love me, Arthur," Eames replied fiercely. Arthur couldn't deny it. "You love me so much, and for so long. How can I not love you back?"

He kissed Arthur properly then, hands cupping Arthur's face protectively, softly, and gently and, fuck, did it feel like he meant it. It felt like heart and soul and honesty and home and Eames's sharp laughter and the taste old tobacco smoke. It felt like the best kiss Arthur had ever had. He melted into Eames, kissing back. He was, fundamentally, not a strong man so he let Eames kiss him, let Eames hold him close, and let Eames have every inch of his heart. He let Eames's soft lips move against his own, let their breath mingle and let Eames move even closer on the couch to crowd him against the arm. His lips were just as soft as they'd been when Arthur had kissed him once under the stars in the city. 

Arthur was reeling and his pulse was rushing. His face was burning and his heart had never been racing from an almost-chaste make out session, no tongues, just Eames and everything Arthur had wanted for so fucking long. It might have been the best moment of his life. 

He ruined it, of course. He broke away with a hiss when Eames's forearm bumped his shot-out, broken shoulder as he tried to feel Arthur up. Eames's grip loosened and he pulled back concernedly, his legs still pressed against Arthur's. The romantic, stupid look in his eyes didn't fade an iota. 

"Sorry," he murmured. The torn, shot muscle of his shoulder spasmed and refused to relax. It radiated pain. "Fuck, you're really all banged up, huh?" 

"Thanks for the diagnosis, doc," Arthur bit out sarcastically, resisting the urge to grab at his shoulder and cry. Fuck, that had hurt. Eames huffed a laugh, undeterred. One of his hands rubbed a soothing circle on Arthur's back. Arthur focused on that, and his muscle relaxed, still dimly throbbing, but easing so Arthur could breathe. 

He became very aware he was wearing one of Eames's threadbare sleep shirts, and a pair of Eames's flannels. They were in Eames's safe house and Eames had held his hand during his surgeries and slept in a chair by his bed when he was too doped up to move or feel his pain. He had monitored Arthur like a hawk ever since he saved Arthur. Eames, who hated blood and dealing with wounds, who had refused to change a girlfriend's bandages once because of the gross hole left in her arm from a bullet and the fact that insides should stay inside, had been nursing Arthur back to health for nearly two weeks now. He had been dealing with third-degree burns and bubbled blisters. He had dealt with six different sets of stitches.

"What does this mean?" Arthur blurted, finally looking up at Eames, ignoring his shoulder which was still throbbing unhappily. Eames brushed a hand over his forehead tenderly (his thumb brushed a cotton pad taped over the sewn-together flap of Arthur's scalp without wincing and losing colour) with that sappy smile of his. Arthur's stomach did hopeful flips. 

"It means I'm yours, darling," Eames promised. He lifted Arthur's right hand, gentle of the brace and fractured thumb. He kissed Arthur's knuckles ridiculously. Arthur smiled. "I can't promise you a lot, not right away, because I'm not actually gay, but I can promise that I love you and that I'm going to try so hard to be the guy you deserve."

"This isn't a romance novel or a porno," Arthur warned, a last-ditch attempt to protect his leaping heart. "Straight guys can't just turn gay, not really." Eames laughed. Arthur grinned back, feeling genuinely optimistic. "You're still willing to try this?" he asked. "Being in love with a guy, the whole thing. The real deal."

"I much liked our make out just now," Eames admitted. "You're my best friend. I'm happy when I'm around you. Why wouldn't I want more of that?" Arthur was a man and he was not going to be touched or cry over the stunning sincerity bleeding into Eames's voice. He was a manly man and didn't have to swallow around a lump in his throat. "It's all just skin, innit?" Eames shrugged. "Besides, I have a penis with whom I get along quite well. Yours can't be that much more to handle."

It was this sort of ridiculous, foolhardy, rash, incredibly clever and witty statement that made Arthur fall in love with Eames in the first place. He kissed Eames to shut him up. 

//

"Stick your hands inside of my pocket. Keep them warm while I'm still here.  
Tell me this love hasn’t changed me, hasn’t changed me at all.  
Stick your heart inside of my chest. Keep it warm here while we rest."

 

//

It turned out; Eames thought unhappily, that Arthur's penis was quite different to his own. 

Firstly, Arthur had insisted they take things unbearably slow. Eames never took things that slowly. Eames had always been a bit of a monogamous slut; he usually jumped into bed with his partner quite early in the relationship because he liked sex. Sex was amazing. What sexual person didn't like sex? He told himself that he had a cock and knew how to handle it, how different could Arthur's be? And it wasn't like he didn't like kissing Arthur. He liked kissing Arthur and he liked the feel of the soft skin on Arthur's lower back on his rough hands when he slid up Arthur's shirt and he even liked the way Arthur's belly had a scratch of hair on it. He had figured he would like sex with Arthur just as much. 

Arthur had insisted they take things slowly very early on because he had, after all, nearly been bludgeoned to death with a big rock after being shot and pretty much anything Eames did, no matter how gentle, kind of hurt. And fair enough, Eames had thought.

But then, two months later, the bruises were gone, the ribs were better, the sling was off and Arthur had even started running in the early, early, early mornings. They were due to take a job in a few weeks. Physical injury was no longer an excuse. 

"Bed with a guy is probably a lot different than bed with a girl," Arthur had told him when he had asked yet again why they weren't screwing like rabbits. "I think I would need some time to get used to the idea of vagina because vagina is disgusting. I just want to extend you the same courtesy. Take all the time in the world, Eames. Be sure this is even what you want," he had added gently. Eames had scoffed loftily and threw a sweet potato fry at Arthur for good measure. "I'm serious," Arthur had said unbothered, picking the fry off his lap and eating it. "It's kind of dangerous. Big step. It nearly got me killed, after all. In the bigger picture, you're also not gay."

"I'm fucking sure about this, Arthur," Eames had snapped. "I wouldn't have kissed you if I hadn't been." So Arthur had shrugged and Eames decided they were going to have sex fucking soon, dammit.

He had seduced Arthur rather easily after their next real, let's-go-out-for-dinner-and-ice-cream date. He waited for Arthur to kick off his shoes with that satisfied humming of his that meant this had been a good night, then made his move. He pressed Arthur against the wall of the hallway Arthur called a foyer and then the wall of the kitchen, and then the back of the door of the master bedroom, where he had managed to get them both down to their pants before Arthur had protested. 

"Slowly," Arthur had panted, Eames pressed against his already-damp chest. Arthur ran his hands over Eames's tattoos, over pectorals and abs, in counterpoint with his words. "Aren't we—slowly?"

"I am going to sleep with you tonight," Eames had practically growled. It was a good idea because Arthur flushed at the sound. He had pressed his hand to Arthur's tented boxers and had thought, fuck, I can do this. He pulled Arthur's pants down and very much didn't balk at the reddened shaft of Arthur's cock. Arthur pulled his face back up, stealing his gaze with dark eyes and swollen lips. He tried to distract Eames, as he had been doing for weeks, with his talented tongue and ability to make out for hours and hours. No one had ever called Eames an undetermined man. 

He got them both to the bed and successfully naked. He kissed at Arthur's neck and pressed his leg between Arthur's two. Arthur's hip was sharp and the perfect angle for frottage. Arthur had gasped at the sensation of Eames's thrust and his short, blunt nails scrabbled at Eames's back and shoulders. Arthur groaned, so Eames thrust again, figuring he was doing something right. The sensation of Arthur's hot erection pressing against his belly as Arthur reflexively thrust back was strange enough to counterbalance the sensation of Eames's erection against that perfect, milky skin. He hesitated; looking down at the surplus of cock and the fact his partner didn’t have a pussy Eames could eat out and tease while he worked out his hesitancy. He felt stupid and fifteen, unsure of his duties in bed.

Arthur had slithered out from underneath him, sensing this with his extra sense that allowed him to spot upcoming-sexuality-crises. He pushed Eames onto his back. 

"You are so fucking perfect," Arthur had murmured then, biting Eames's neck. He stroked one hand up the other side of Eames's neck, his left hand snaking down and wrapping about Eames's cock. Eames jerked and groaned at the firm, sure grip. Before he knew it, that hot mouth had left his neck and wrapped around something else. He buried his hands in Arthur's hair, thick and a little coarse and silky, trying not to thrust up and choke him. Arthur squeezed his wrist and hummed encouragingly. Eames tightened his grip and guided Arthur's head before that fucking tongue made any form of motor control impossible. Arthur sucked at him, taking his half-thrusts with ease and running a hand over Eames's muscled stomach almost absently. 

"Arthur, darling, Arthur, you perfection, Arthur," Eames blethered, his fingers twitching randomly in Arthur's dusky curls. He had tried to pull Arthur up warningly when he was close, close, close, but Arthur knocked his hands away. He held Eames's hips and swirled his tongue and hollowed his cheeks and looked up into Eames's eyes. Eames gasped at the sight of Arthur all ruffled and perfect, threw his head back and came deep (how did Arthur get him that deep?) in Arthur's swallowing, hot throat. 

"You taste amazing," Arthur murmured on the edge of Eames's awareness, before lapping at Eames's snapping, oversensitive nerves. He nearly whimpered as he softened under Arthur's attentions. Arthur kissed his way up his chest, and rested on his shoulder. After what seemed like a year, the weight on the mattress shifted. The soft head on his arm moved away.

"Where are you going?" he had mumbled before his brain had fully recovered from nearly blacking out he came so hard (fuck, it had been a long time and, discounting that, particularly spectacular). Arthur brushed back Eames's sweaty hair tenderly. If Eames could open his eyes, he trusted he would see that warm look in Arthur's eyes again. 

"Just going to take care of myself; I'll be back," Arthur murmured gently. Eames snorted. He grabbed Arthur's elbow and pulled. Arthur flopped with an oof on top of Eames. 

"I know how to jerk off," he said determinedly. A cock was a cock; he was sure. He knew how to jerk off and Arthur's cock couldn't be that different. He really wanted to pay Arthur back and get him off happily (because fuck, that had been wonderful), and he really, really tried. 

But he kind of failed. Arthur's cock was very different from the only cock he was used to handling. Arthur was cut and the lack of a foreskin left the heft of his penis all wrong. Eames got mildly freaked out and was not able to get Arthur off in a way he could imagine was satisfactory. Arthur had chuckled when he cursed and looked down to make sure he was doing the right thing for the fourth time, which didn't help. His post-tremendous-orgasm motor skills left a little to be desired as well. 

"Let me," Arthur had said his voice a little strained with arousal but mostly happy and soft. He took over what Eames suspected was the worst hand job Arthur had received since his first fumbling affairs with some other fifteen year old boy. Eames watched Arthur's movements, the twist and cant of his wrist. His forging mind memorised the movements because he was so going to rock Arthur's world with this whole gay sex thing next time. 

Smiling at his ambitious fantasy, he stroked over Arthur's lithe muscles, his fingers catching on a patchwork of scars along his back, and Arthur's head fell into the junction on Eames's neck and shoulder. He babbled nonsense Polish (which shouldn't have been a turn on that made Eames grope at Arthur's defined arms and back, tracing bumps and crevasses of roped scar tissue), the occasional English sentence still bubbling out. 

Arthur was breathing heavy and short, getting close. "You're so gorgeous," he promised as he kissed every inch of Eames he could reach and Eames believed him. "So perfect. You're so perfect; you're mine, you're here, oh—" Arthur's hand was flying, certain and firm. Eames pulled Arthur into a hot, desperate kiss and Arthur came not long after with a throaty moan, mouth falling open and his head burying in Eames's neck and shoulder once more. He also came, Eames noted almost detachedly, all over Eames's stomach. 

Arthur's arms apparently turned into jelly after he came, and he flopped against Eames's side while he panted and recovered. Eames thought about Arthur saying his own cock tasted good and he scooped up a bit of Arthur's spunk off his belly and licked it off his finger. He wrinkled his nose. Salty, mostly. Also kind of gross. 

Arthur rolled onto his back, yanking a drawer open and pulling out a dry, cotton washcloth. "Sorry," he snickered happily as he wiped Eames's stomach clean. Eames frowned over his general coital bliss. Arthur tossed the cloth in the general direction of the laundry bin after giving himself a wipe and flopped back down next to Eames. 

"Sorry for coming all over my stomach?" Eames clarified. "I'm pretty sure I came all over your upper intestine and then failed to give you a hand job. Fuck, that was deep throating." Arthur laughed again, burrowing against Eames's side. Eames pulled him close with a grin he hid in Arthur's sweat-damp curls. Arthur laughed a lot during sex, he hoped. Otherwise he had been especially bad tonight. 

"I am an expert,” Arthur remarked dryly. “Welcome to the world of homoerotica," Arthur murmured against his shoulder. He used a leg to hook one of Eames's and pull him closer. He left it splayed over Eames's thighs. "I am an aggressive post-sex cuddler but will roll away once I fall asleep. Hope that's fine," Arthur continued drowsily. He mashed his face into Eames's collarbones and Eames tightened his arms. As Arthur drifted off and rolled over, snuffling lightly, he scooted up behind, spooning. Arthur, as he had when they'd fallen asleep together before, latched predictably onto the arm Eames draped over his chest. He laced their fingers together in his sleep and held Eames's hand between both of his own, tucking all three hands under his chin. 

Eames kissed the back of Arthur's neck and admired the three hickeys he'd left. Not too bad for a first timer, he told himself, and fell asleep. 

//

"Your love is better than ice cream. Better than anything else that I've tried.  
Your love is better than ice cream. Everyone here knows how to fight.  
It's a long way down. It's a long way down. It's a long way down to the place where we started from."

//


End file.
